 Rethinking Agency: A Phenomenological Approach to Embodiment and Agentic CapacitiesDiana Coole Political Studies, 2005, vol. 53, issue 1, 124-142 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. Date: 2005 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:polstu:v:53:y:2005:i:1:p:124-142 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from Access Statistics for this article Political Studies is currently edited by Matthew Festenstein and Martin Smith More articles in Political Studies from Political Studies Association |
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