Discovering Active Nature in the Subject

Abstract

The Western tradition of philosophical discourse commonly understands agency as an exclusive power of human subjectivity, the ability to form intentions and act according to them. The previous chapter describes an alternative conception of agency as the power to change, and the subject as one kind of field in a complex assemblage of interacting processes. However, the weight of a long philosophical tradition supports the anthropomorphic image of agency. It exercises a sedimentary social force of shared habits of thought. Concepts that go unquestioned for too long in a tradition calcify into presumptions, that which all right-thinking people intuitively know is obvious and true. In this case, the frozen presumption is the circular definition that only human subjects are genuine agents, because the definition of agency is derived from the activities of the human subject.