The Problem of Agency: Posthumanist Theory and English Teaching

Abstract

Many of the major movements in English teaching over the last 25 years have drawn on poststructuralist/posthumanist theory, filtered through work in cultural studies predicated on the social construction of identity. While this has been enormously productive in many ways, there has been a nagging problem with the question of agency. How can subject English enable students to be agentic, able to shape their lives actively, rather than simply being aware of and/or resistant to the shaping society imposes? This article discusses this problem of agency, and proposes that in fact there has often been an underlying concern in much theory with affirming the importance of the ‘art of living’. Some answers as to the shape this might take are to be found in perhaps one of the most unexpected places, the work of Lacan, as developed by Mari Ruti.