Agential Power Research Articles

Notes Toward a Theoretical History of Indic Media

This study demonstrates how Brahminic embodiment provides a constraining milieu for the growth of technology in different historical and epistemic epochs. Brahmanic comportment allows for appropriating technology in a way that creates a historical continuity with an auratic past and disallows the agential power of technology to extinguish the spirit of the Indic auratic past. In effect, Brahmanic comportment disallows technological advancement and human flourishing.

Reproductive Justice, Race, and the Prescience of the Past

The question of control—over bodies, knowledge, narrative, and nation—interweaves throughout Dana Medoro’s Certain Concealments: Poe, Hawthorne, and Early Nineteenth-Century Abortion and Stephanie Peebles Tavera’s (P)rescription Narratives: Feminist Medical Fiction and the Failure of American Censorship. Medoro focuses on discourses of life and women’s (non)reproductive sexuality in Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s fiction. She establishes that the two authors were deeply skeptical of medicolegal definitions of life that created racial and economic hierarchies; through focal characters and indirect, playful prose, they critique discourses of life that valued some lives over others in the creation of Anglo-American nationalism. Tavera investigates late-nineteenth-century woman-authored medical fiction as directly engaging many of the same concepts Medoro explores. (P)rescription Narratives calls attention to the ways that Comstock-era censorship colluded with race science, medicine, and the law to limit women’s sexual and reproductive autonomy. It demonstrates literature’s agential capacities as the writers it addresses explicitly refute and redirect objectifying narratives. Combined, these texts show that questions of what “counts” as life, and by what (and whose) paradigms those lives can be lived, are hardly theoretical musings. Rather, they determine, systemically and corporeally, “life’s legibility and reproduction … in the name of American citizenship” (Medoro 19). These texts, in other words, are highly relevant and important as literary and cultural scholarship, making a powerful argument for the study of the humanities. But they are also important because they document the subversive and agential power of the written word to discern, document, and possibly heal—to affect change for today and the future.

Between “devoted mothers” and “disability advocates”: When Korean mothers of developmentally disabled adults become committed to social change

AbstractThis study explores how mothers of children who are young adults with developmental disabilities in South Korea experience identity strain and tension when they engage in advocacy on behalf of their children. Based on in‐depth interviews with 20 mothers in Korea who are members of parents’ advocacy groups, this article found that women experienced feelings of tension that arose when they deviated from normative understandings of what it means to be “devoted mothers.” Furthermore, they created two alternative versions of maternal roles—professional “I” mothers and professional “WE” mothers—that supported their identities as “disability advocates” in order to alleviate their emotional experiences. Such differences led them to practice different styles of advocacy in their interactions with disability welfare services. Based on these findings, this article discusses identity strain that emerges during the mothers’ political engagement on behalf of their disabled children. In doing so, it contributes to expanding current attention to parental advocacy activities in order to more deeply understand women's agential power to force social change and to act against existing state policies and power.

"THE MAKING AND UNMAKING OF THE SYNAGOGUE IN BIRZULA: MATERIALITY, TEXTUALITY AND AGENCY IN THE EARLY 1920’S SOVIET UNION Abstract"

This paper explores the relationship between religious materiality and textuality in the Soviet archives as reflected in the case of the 1923 closure of a Synagogue in Birzula, a town located in the northern part of the Odessa district (oblast) in Ukraine. This study combines the approach of the Foucauldian ‘Soviet subjectivity’ school with the methodological framework of new materialism in order to identify and analyze the traces of the agential power of the Synagogue of Birzula. In their confrontation over the status of the synagogues, religious actors, Soviet activists, state and party officials produced numerous documents in which they spoke about themselves and about the synagogue. The case of the Synagogue of Birzula encapsulates the wider confrontation over the role and status of religion in Soviet society. This paper is about how to read the textual to discover the agential power of the material.

Deific Figures and Human Bodies: Creating Hierarchies of Difference through the Incarnation of Moral Authority

Religious communities have long affirmed the agency of their sacred texts and their God/gods, providing a unique site of study for research on ventriloquizing authority, textual agency, and the power of incorporeal figures like values or principles. This paper uses PraiseMoves, an Evangelical organization selling a “Christian alternative to yoga,” as a case study to develop the concept of deific agency. Deific agency is the agential power of incorporeal projections of moral authority. These projections mediate text-human relationships both in and beyond particular organizational contexts by imbuing visibly-privileged human bodies with moral authority. Deific figures can thus overwhelm textual agency by bonding with visibly-privileged bodies and thereafter organizing perceptions of moral authority in and beyond organizations in ways that disproportionately benefit physically-privileged human beings. This paper concludes by articulating the value of believing bodies for research and suggesting future avenues of inquiry.

Partners and Patients: A Revised Grammar of Social Power

This brief response concerns Arash Abizadeh’s recently proposed four-place ‘grammar’ of agential social power: that the social power of an agent, V, with respect to outcome type O consists in V’s capacity to effect outcomes of type O ‘with the assistance of agents X, despite the resistance of agents Y’. Among other problems, this grammar implies that all agential power is social power. I propose, in place of Abizadeh’s grammar, that V’s social power with respect to O consists in V’s capacity to effect O with the assistance of X, thereby affecting patients Y. Among other things, this grammar goes further than Abizadeh’s in rejecting the tradition, owing to Max Weber, that holds that all social power is power to overcome resistance. Talk of overcoming resistance drops out of the definition of social power completely.

The Roc’s egg as vanishing mediator in Aladdin and the Magic Lamp from text to film

ABSTRACT In this paper, I trace the absent narrative of the Roc’s Egg in Aladdin and the Magic Lamp to the film adaptation. Disney, in particular, omits the narrative and by omitting, changes the inner logic of the text. The 1992 animated film and the 2019 live adaptation introduce a power relationship that shifts from the text’s structural power into agential power through its genre ideology of Americanisation. In this shift, there is a vanishing element that allows the change and that is the Roc’s egg whose meaning is power limitation. I argue that the roc’s egg in the text functions, in Jameson and Žižek’s lens, as a vanishing mediator that though is absent in the films still finds its meaning subsumed in them. In this way, the crux of the argument is to diagnose such Americanisation through limitation.

Beyond the Command

Machines, from artificially intelligent digital assistants to embodied robots, are becoming more pervasive in everyday life. Drawing on feminist science and technology studies (STS) perspectives, we demonstrate how machine designers are not just crafting neutral objects, but relationships between machines and humans that are entangled in human social issues such as gender and power dynamics. Thus, in order to create a more ethical and just future, the dominant assumptions currently underpinning the design of these human-machine relations must be challenged and reoriented toward relations of justice and inclusivity. This paper contributes the "social machine" as a model for technology designers who seek to recognize the importance, diversity and complexity of the social in their work, and to engage with the agential power of machines. In our model, the social machine is imagined as a potentially equitable relationship partner that has agency and as an "other" that is distinct from, yet related to, humans, objects, and animals. We critically examine and contrast our model with tendencies in robotics that consider robots as tools, human companions, animals or creatures, and/or slaves. In doing so, we demonstrate ingrained dominant assumptions about human-machine relations and reveal the challenges of radical thinking in the social machine design space. Finally, we present two design challenges based on non-anthropomorphic figuration and mutuality, and call for experimentation, unlearning dominant tendencies, and reimagining of sociotechnical futures.

Negotiating agency in mitigating franchisee failure: A critical discourse analysis

This study examines how asymmetries of agential power in franchisor-franchisee relationships contribute to franchisee failure, and how franchisees can negotiate agential power to mitigate failure. Based on a critical discourse analysis, the research findings establish that franchisor dominance during three core stages of the franchisee lifecycle – notably at the pre-launch, inauguration and operation phases – influences franchisee failure. Supporting a theorization based on the agencing framework, this paper presents a nuanced understanding of how agential power is attributed and negotiated in franchise relationships, and portrays franchisees as proactive actors capable of negotiating a stronger, counteractive, agential power position. We introduce the agencing framework as an important governance mechanism for franchise relations and raise implications for managing power-imbalances in franchise relationships.

“It’s a Black Hole . . .”: Exploring Teachers’ Narratives and Practices for Digital Literacies in the Adult EAL Context

A strength-based approach to teaching digital literacies can advance language education for adults from refugee and migrant backgrounds, preparing them for life in a new country. This article draws on a 6-month ethnographic study at an adult English language center in Australia and explores teachers’ perspectives and practices related to teaching digital literacies to understand how prepared they are to employ learners’ own resources. Using sociomaterial theory, this research found that English as an Additional Language (EAL) teachers’ narratives about learners focused on what they lacked rather than what they brought to learning. It also found that while teaching practices utilized some strength-based pedagogical principles, the teachers viewed their work as being deficient. They did not always recognize their agential power nor did they overtly understand that the technology itself afforded this power. The article concludes with implications for EAL practice and professional learning of teachers who work in the adult sector.

From Categories to Connections in the Archaeology of Eastern North America

A renewed adoption of relational perspectives by archaeologists working in eastern North America has created an opportunity to move beyond categorical approaches, those reliant on the top-down implementation of essentialist models or “types.” Instead, emerging approaches, concerned with highlighting the agential power of relationships between individuals, communities, and institutions, and, more generally, with simply moving beyond categories, are allowing archaeologists to move from the bottom-up, focusing instead on the relationships that underlie, and indeed constitute, social, political, and economic phenomena. In this paper, I synthesize recent archaeological work from across eastern North America in which archaeologists have productively moved beyond a reliance on categorical perspectives. I explicitly focus on the potential for relational perspectives to recalibrate our social and temporal referents in crafting archaeological narratives.

Artificial intelligence and philosophical creativity: From analytics to crealectics

Abstract The tendency to idealise artificial intelligence as independent from human manipulators, combined with the growing ontological entanglement of humans and digital machines, has created an “anthrobotic” horizon, in which data analytics, statistics and probabilities throw our agential power into question. How can we avoid the consequences of a reified definition of intelligence as universal operation becoming imposed upon our destinies? It is here argued that the fantasised autonomy of automated intelligence presents a contradistinctive opportunity for philosophical consciousness to understand itself anew as holistic and co-creative, beyond the recent “analytic” moment of the history of philosophy. Here we introduce the concept of “crealectic intelligence”, a meta-analytic and meta-dialectic aspect of consciousness. Intelligent behaviour may consist in distinguishing discrete familiar parts or reproducible functions in the midst of noise via an analytic process of segmentation; intelligence may also manifest itself in the constitution of larger wholes and dynamic unities through a dialectic process of association or assemblage. But, by contrast, crealectic intelligence co-creates realities in the image of an ideal or truth, taking into account the desiring agent imbued with a sense of possibility, in a relationship not only with the Real but also with the creative sublime or “Creal”.

Divergent Perspectives on Diversity and Inclusion: Reconceptualizing & Advancing Black Scholarship

Why does diversity and inclusion scholarship remain silent on epistemic injustice? This article demonstrates that a culture of wilful blindness embedded in historically racist academic structures breeds inequalities in knowledge production and dissemination that disenfranchises black scholars and denies them contribution to dominant discourse. Reflecting on the experiences of black academics in diverse disciplines, we conceptualize black scholarship as underpinned by epistemic struggle and epistemic survival, due to subjugation to epistemic injustice. We conceptualize epistemic struggle as striving to produce and disseminate knowledge in the face of difficulties and resistance generated by structural and agential power. Epistemic survival denotes the sustained presence of black scholarship through compromise, collusion and radicalism, within an academia founded on the ideology of white supremacy. We argue that black scholarship struggles for survival not only for the sake of emancipating and integrating people of color, but also with the goal to bridge deep epistemic divisions. In reimagining black scholarship through the lenses of epistemic injustice, we aim to embed the concept into theoretical debates on diversity and inclusion in order to inform management practices in a nuanced way.

Our Nonhuman Story: The Posthuman Reality Imagined in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818)

The fast-shifting material condition we are living in―one that is increasingly technologically mediated―demands a new way of reading Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818). In con versation with posthumanist thinkers and with a handful of ‘big’ thinkers of our time, this essay proposes two things. Primarily, I seek to reread Shelley’s speculative fiction in light of the current theoretical debates on posthumanism. But it is not my intention to forgo the historical specificity of Frankenstein. Rather, this essay stands on the meaningful intersections of Romantic life science, eighteenth-century aesthetic discourses, and posthumanist concerns. I argue that Shelley’s 1818 Frankenstein draws the narrative arc of posthumanist fiction, for the novel attests to the possi bility of distinctly nonhuman cognitive developments while reckoning with its agential power. To that end, this essay examines the Creature’s language acquisition, his discernment of beauty, sympathy, and benevo lence, and eventually his request for a female companion. These facets are the key tenors that altogether illustrate cognitive power of the tenta tively nonhuman. More importantly, perhaps nothing can better illustrate a nexus of fraught emotions that attend to the making of and cohabiting with the nonhuman―repulse, anxiety, and fear―than the interactions between Frankenstein and the Creature. The pseudo father-and-son rela tionship nicely anticipates our very twenty-first-century unease toward the kind of nonhuman characterized by augmented physicality and enhanced cognitive capabilities that might match or surpass humans.

“Sür ve Bağla”: İngiliz Romanındaki Atlara İnsansonrası Gözlerle Bakmak

“Romanın yükselişi” hakkındaki akademik tartışmalarda çoğunlukla kabul edildiği üzere İngiliz romanının evrimi 1740ların ortasından sonra bir sıçrama yaşamıştır. Bu dönemi takip eden yüz yıllık süre içerisinde, yani 1840ların sonuna kadar, İngiliz romanı hızlı bir biçimde olgunluğa erişmiştir. Bu tarihsel dönem birçok akademisyen tarafından Antroposen çağının başlangıcı olarak kabul edilen Endüstri Devrimi’nin de tarihsel yoğunluk noktası ile neredeyse bire bir olarak örtüşmektedir. ‘Erken Antroposen Çağı’ olarak nitelendirilebilecek olan bu yüz yıllık dönemin neredeyse tam ortasında James Watt’ın buharlı lokomotifi icadı (1784) da yer almaktadır. Watt’ın icadı, o dönemde Britanya’daki insan toplumunun işaret, üretim-tüketim ve değiş-tokuş sistemlerinde insanlardan sonra en fazla eyleyici güce sahip hayvanlar olan atların yerini Viktorya Çağı’nın sonuna gelindiğinde “beygir gücü” ve “demir at”ların aldığı bir süreci başlatmıştır. Ancak, bu yüz yıllık sürede atlar sadece İngiltere’nin şehirlerinde ve kırsal bölgesinde çalışmaya devam etmekle kalmamış, aynı zamanda da İngiliz romanında “anlatısal iş yükü” taşımaya devam etmiştir. On dokuzuncu yüzyılın ortasında yaşanan Darwin Devrimi ile de bu kez insan-at ilişkilerinin ontolojik boyutlarına ilişkin algı bağlamında bir değişim yaşanmıştır. İnsanlar ve hayvanlar arasındaki ontolojik sürekliliğe ilişkin Darwinci anlayış, İngiliz romanında da yansımalarını bulmuştur. Bu arka plan üzerinde, bu makalede öncelikle Antroposen bağlamı “romanın yükselişi” tartışması ile ilişkilendirilmektedir. Daha sonra da, insansonrası bir eleştirel konumdan bakılarak, Henry Fielding’in Joseph Andrews (1742), Jane Austen’ın Northanger Manastırı (Northanger Abbey) (1818) ve Emily Brontë’nin Uğultulu Tepeler (Wuthering Heights) (1848) adlı romanlarına atıfla canlı atların “anlatısal eyleyiciliği,” George Eliot’ın Silas Marner (1861) ve Thomas Hardy’nin Tess (Tess of the d’Urbervilles) (1891) adlı romanlarına ilişkin olarak da ölü atların “anlatısal eyleyiciliği” tartışılmakta ve örneklendirilmektedir.

A broad definition of agential power

Can we develop a definition of power that is satisfactorily determinate but also enables rather than foreclose important substantive scientific and normative debates about social and political life? I present a broad definition according to which agents have power with respect to a certain outcome (including, inter alia, the shaping of certain social relations) to the extent that they can voluntarily determine whether that outcome occurs. This simple definition generates a surprisingly complex agenda for substantive descriptive and normative inquiry. The proposed definition is partly developed through a critical engagement with Rainer Forst’s important recent account of ‘noumenal power.’

The Complexities of Silence in Buhle Ngaba’s The Girl Without a Sound in the Context of Contemporary South African Tertiary Education Protest

This paper aims to read Buhle Ngaba’s The Girl Without a Sound, a children’s book available for free online, alongside readings of silence in the context of the protests against rape culture at the university currently known as Rhodes (UCKAR/Rhodes University). The allegorical power of the text in the context of a genre largely populated by white, male protagonists is significant. This paper will also consider the role of children’s books as social texts and how these can be used to impart ideologies, for better or worse. I will argue that The Girl Without a Sound resists silencing in both historical and contemporary contexts. The protagonist is a little girl with a “fluff of hair, a mouth the shape of a cherry blossom and brown pools for eyes” (Ngaba 2016: 2), an atypical protagonist in most English-medium children’s literature industries. This paper aims to articulate the allegorical power of The Girl Without a Sound and to read it against theories of silence, protest and the contemporary moment of student protest, particularly with regard to the protests against rape culture that took place at UCKAR in April 2016. Ultimately, the text offers an affirmation of the agential power of girls of colour, speaking in concert with calls for intersectionality in contemporary political movements.

Concepts and Views from International Relations and their Potential Contribution to Impact Assessment Thinking and Practice

ABSTRACTAnalysts of environmental impact assessment and sustainability assessment tools recognise that ideally different types of knowledge and thinking need to be incorporated for such tools to be more effective in their sustainability objectives. Broadening thinking help to understanding complex issues these tools aspire to uncover. The sole use of positivist lenses is inadequate in seeking to better understand complexity. Assessment tools are usually formulated in a rational-technical or positivist manner. This can be problematic. The tools are driven by top-down technocratic motivations, which is not always ideal for an ever increasing complex society. Paradigms and theories influence our conceptualisation of phenomena and actions we take. This has been recognised by International Relations (IR) specialists and commentators confronted by the question of the discipline, relevance to policy formulation. International Relations can add to assessment practitioners’ knowledge and skills base since it is steeped in theory, deals with issues affecting all levels of society and investigates numerous concerns. Concepts and views from the discipline I will discuss are change, interactive processes, everyday international political economy and agential power and governability. The main question is what is the substance of these views and concepts and how can they assist the assessment practitioner? Throughout, I will indicate the relevance of the views and concepts, to assessment processes with practical examples.

Women’s Agential Power in the Political Economy of Agricultural Land

This article seeks to understand whether the legal policies and advances of women’s movements have resulted in women’s entitlement to land and whether the land reforms carried out from the 1970s to the 1990s have weakened the grip of patriarchy and increased women’s capability and land-related decision-making power. We examine these questions by looking at (i) women as producers of agricultural goods and participants in the market economy and (ii) women as partial or full owners of land and the impact of this on decision-making. In both cases, there is the role of women as managers of productive assets, which is different from their former and traditional status as dependent family members.

Climatologists, Theologians, and Prophets: Toward an Ecotheology of Critical Hope

Climatologists, Theologians, and Prophets: Toward an Ecotheology of Critical Hope