This discussion of agency is quite fascinating. Perhaps it
shows that the initial question was not stupid at all, but
smart!
Agency seems to me to have a natural element, the animal's
ability to move voluntarily about its environment, and a
cultural element, something like the Christian insistence on
individual moral responsibility or the traditional Arab's
elaborate web of obligations, honor, and so forth.
Perhaps Foucault's difficulty was that so many other
theorists before him had entangled agency with the whole
Marxist/Hegelian idea of the subject of history;
subjectivity is somehow thought to hold the key to political
freedom as the agent's genuine expression of itself. This
is transcendentalism rather than historicism, closer to
Kant's political essays than Marx as he might want to be
read.
Therefore Foucault wishes to historicize agency and show
that its relationship to subjectivity, action, desire,
history (and so forth) is never determinate once and for
all, because it's not just that agency makes history, but
also history that develops different modes of agency,
different frameworks for action, at different points in
time. The Bedouin is free because s/he is free to negotiate
preexisting structures like horizontal and vertical honor,
or a complex gift economy. The constraints are the only
available field of action; they are rarely even attended to
unless they malfunction.
Notice that "real" stupidity, as in "idiocy" (in the middle
ages) or "mental retardation" (while I was growing up) or
a "disability" as we say today is supposed to limit a
person's agency. Why? Besause in such cases the
individual, while capable of voluntary motion, can never
fully understand the elaborate conditions that make up the
agent's sphere of action.
Peter Winston Fettner
Intellectual Heritage Program
214 Anderson Hall
Office: 215A/213B Anderson Hall
Office Hours: Thursday, 10:00 AM-1:00 PM
Phone: (215) 204-1770
Email: pfettner@xxxxxxxxxx
http://www.temple.edu/ih/index.htm
Department of Philosophy
728 Anderson Hall
Philadelphia, PA 19122
(215) 204-1770
http://www.temple.edu/philosophy/index.html
shows that the initial question was not stupid at all, but
smart!
Agency seems to me to have a natural element, the animal's
ability to move voluntarily about its environment, and a
cultural element, something like the Christian insistence on
individual moral responsibility or the traditional Arab's
elaborate web of obligations, honor, and so forth.
Perhaps Foucault's difficulty was that so many other
theorists before him had entangled agency with the whole
Marxist/Hegelian idea of the subject of history;
subjectivity is somehow thought to hold the key to political
freedom as the agent's genuine expression of itself. This
is transcendentalism rather than historicism, closer to
Kant's political essays than Marx as he might want to be
read.
Therefore Foucault wishes to historicize agency and show
that its relationship to subjectivity, action, desire,
history (and so forth) is never determinate once and for
all, because it's not just that agency makes history, but
also history that develops different modes of agency,
different frameworks for action, at different points in
time. The Bedouin is free because s/he is free to negotiate
preexisting structures like horizontal and vertical honor,
or a complex gift economy. The constraints are the only
available field of action; they are rarely even attended to
unless they malfunction.
Notice that "real" stupidity, as in "idiocy" (in the middle
ages) or "mental retardation" (while I was growing up) or
a "disability" as we say today is supposed to limit a
person's agency. Why? Besause in such cases the
individual, while capable of voluntary motion, can never
fully understand the elaborate conditions that make up the
agent's sphere of action.
Peter Winston Fettner
Intellectual Heritage Program
214 Anderson Hall
Office: 215A/213B Anderson Hall
Office Hours: Thursday, 10:00 AM-1:00 PM
Phone: (215) 204-1770
Email: pfettner@xxxxxxxxxx
http://www.temple.edu/ih/index.htm
Department of Philosophy
728 Anderson Hall
Philadelphia, PA 19122
(215) 204-1770
http://www.temple.edu/philosophy/index.html