The Meaning of Agency

Abstract

Amongst the many qualifications of meaning that have become part of the lingua franca of the west in recent years are the words ‘whatever that means’, a phrase initially used by Prince Charles, prior to his marriage to Lady Diana Spencer, in a discussion about being ‘in love’. What was communicated in this extraordinary qualification was a dramatic recognition of the instability and the frailty of words: the ways in which they change, are used, are abused, and consistently carry complex meanings that have provided employment for generations of scholars. It is through words that we define not just ourselves but also our political and our national identities; to re-make those configurations we call upon other words, whether as summaries of our values or as more extended accounts of our ideals. In this chapter, I shall consider one of the central ‘words’ of development and individual rights, that of agency, and the ways in which this word could be seen as akin to a Trojan horse: the means by which unspoken values and aspirations are taken from one culture to another. But this is not, I also wish to suggest, an account of the imposition of the expectations of one culture on another or a question of what is lost (or gained) in translation. It is more about the extent to which we take for granted the meaning of certain words and the implications that this has for the judgements and policies that they inform. ‘Always historicize!’ is the instruction that Fredric Jameson places at the beginning of The Political Unconscious.¹ This chapter is written with that instruction in mind, an attempt to situate the term agency and in doing so make critique possible. The chapter questions the view that ‘agency’ is inherently positive and suggests that the word (like other words, such as ‘radical’) must be related to the focus of its actions.