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Rethinking Agency: A Phenomenological Approach to Embodiment and Agentic Capacities

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  • Diana Coole

Abstract

Agency has been central to modern conceptions of politics but it is a complicated and contested idea that seems to have fallen into both theoretical and historical crisis. I explore the underlying ideas that have grounded it, as well as some recent historical and theoretical challenges. I respond by advocating an ontological agnosticism regarding who or what exercises agency and suggest a spectrum of agentic capacities instead. Commending a phenomenological approach, I then suggest that agentic capacities emerge and interact across this spectrum. At one pole I envisage pre‐ personal, corporeal processes and at the other, a transpersonal, intersubjective interworld that requires a novel social ontology. I locate individual or collective agents in the middle of the spectrum where they emerge as contingent singularities. My aim here is to retain agency as a necessary ingredient of politics while eliminating the Cartesian presuppositions that have, for example, rendered the agency‐structure debate irresolvable and supported a subjectivist account of agents that is no longer tenable. I show how all three dimensions of the spectrum have political significance and discuss examples to illustrate this.

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  • Diana Coole, 2005. "Rethinking Agency: A Phenomenological Approach to Embodiment and Agentic Capacities," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 53(1), pages 124-142, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:polstu:v:53:y:2005:i:1:p:124-142
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2005.00520.x
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    Cited by:

    1. Samuel A. Chambers, 2007. "‘An Incalculable Effect’: Subversions of Heteronormativity," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 55(3), pages 656-679, October.
    2. Raelin, Joseph A., 2019. "Toward a methodology for studying leadership-as-practice," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 16(4), pages 480-508.
    3. Ivana Graziele Gregory & Marlon Dalmoro, 2023. "Agency of Objects in the Food Consumption Abandonment," RAC - Revista de Administração Contemporânea (Journal of Contemporary Administration), ANPAD - Associação Nacional de Pós-Graduação e Pesquisa em Administração, vol. 27(Vol. 27 N), pages 210255-2102.
    4. Tanja Kubes, 2019. "New Materialist Perspectives on Sex Robots. A Feminist Dystopia/Utopia?," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 8(8), pages 1-14, July.

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