Agency Without Transcendence

Abstract

Scholars of religion have objected to the dominant liberal model of agency, whereby it is equivalent to autonomy, indeed transcendence. According to its critics this liberal conception of agency limits our ability to understand the lives of religious persons. Hence, these scholars look to Judith Butler's ‘paradox of subjection’ in order to fashion a theory of agency that is compatible with the construction, and thus subordination, of the subject. I argue that Butler's theory fails to reconcile agency with the construction of the subject. Moreover, I show how this failure is attributable to her unwitting reinscription of the theistic residues of liberalism, whereby power is figured as transcendent and antagonistic. I then utilize Elaine Scarry's theory of making in order to disentangle the agency of wounding and the agency of making and to render a materialistic account of ‘relative agency’ that is productive for the cross-cultural study of religions.

Keywords:

• agency
• religion
• Judith Butler
• fetish
• consent

Notes

 1. See also Paul Benson's (1994, 652) summary of theories of agency. While Michael E. Bratman suggested that agency be viewed as entailing ‘ownership and rejection of a desire’, he acknowledged that this conjures up a picture of a ‘little person in the head who is looking on at the workings of her desires and giving the nod to some but not to others’ (2003, 221). Veronica Vasterling stated that the ‘quintessence of agency’ is ‘the possibility of initiative or intervention’ (1999, 29). Elizabeth Wingrove defined agency as ‘either the capacity for sovereign initiations or the capacity for critical reflection’ (1999, 883). Sandra Lee Bartky gave the following definition of agency:

An agent is someone who is contemplating an action, has already acted, or is presently acting. But ‘action’ tout court is not incompatible with the agent's being wholly determined by factors outside her control. Hence, the sense of ‘agency’ that appears to be threatened by the poststructuralisms… must involve action of a particular sort—action that is self-generated or self-determined, action that arises as a consequence of an agent's (or subject's) having chosen to act. (1995, 178)

 2. Gary Watson stated: ‘The truth, of course, is that God (traditionally conceived) is the only free agent sans phrase’ (1989, 120). Hence, liberal accounts of agency admit that persons, unlike the divine, are profoundly shaped by their environments. Seyla Benhabib insisted that subjects are ‘not merely extensions of our histories, vis-à-vis our own stories we are in the position of author and character at once’ (Benhabib 1995, 21; emphasis added). See also Ronald Dworkin: ‘If the notion of self-determination is given a very strong definition—the unchosen chooser, the uninfluenced influencer—then it seems as if autonomy is impossible. We know that all individuals have a history’ (1989, 58).

 3. R. Marie Griffith's analysis of the Women's Aglow Fellowship also highlighted this dialectic of submission and empowerment as both traditional to Christianity and as central to the Fellowship's narrative of women's reinvention. See Griffith (1997, 179, 185, 193 & 199). One might also mention Coakley (2002, prologue & ch. 1). Amy Hollywood (2004) considered the relevant challenges posed by this dialectic to the feminist historian.

 4. Lata Mani wrote some time ago: ‘The problem of women's agency occupies a paradoxical position in feminist thinking in that, despite being a central concern, it remains poorly theorized. This is equally true of post-structuralist theory, which, while being critical of the bourgeois conception of agency as the free will of the autonomous self, has yet to produce an adequate alternative formulation’ (1990, 36). Old habits are hard to break. Mack (2003), for instance, wanted theorists of agency to take seriously the religionist's understanding of agency as predicated on surrender and subordination (156); she then went on to describe acts of submission as ‘renouncing agency’ (159). Lois McNay wished to supplement Butler's model of subjectivation with a generative account of agency (2000, 3–5 & 161); although she never explicitly defined agency, there are echoes of the liberal paradigm (and thus I would also say theistic paradigm) insofar as she viewed it as an ontological ground that is analogous with generativity, autonomy and as ‘action that transcends its material context’ (2000, 22; see also 5, 9, 10, 16–22 & 29).

 5. Similarly, Mary McClintock Fulkerson reasoned as follows:

By recognizing the textual or coded nature of all reality, we can perceive its conventional or made character, then look at the existing forms of unity granted texts and subjects and the systems of meaning that create them, and discover their cracks and occlusions in order to press the possibilities for change. (1994, 67; see also 75 & 76)

 6. Fetishism is not native to any culture. Rather, it arose as a colonialist critique of the misplaced agency of subject cultures. Charles de Brosses coined the term ‘fetishism’ in 1757. It is derived from the colonial pidgin word fetisso which circulated in West Africa in the 16th and 17th centuries. This word is derived from the Portuguese feitiço, which in the late Middle Ages meant magical practice and which is derived from the Latin adjective facticius, which originally meant ‘manufactured’. (See Pietz 1985, 7 & 1.)

 7. Fulkerson, for instance, referred to ‘the way women “make” their own gender possibilities (‘liberation’) as well as the way women are “made” by the restrictions of the social discourse available to them (“oppression”)’ (1994, 179).

 8. Stephen K. White claimed ‘Despite Butler's thoroughgoing critique of ontology, it is nevertheless becoming increasingly clear, as her work develops, that she is herself affirming an alternative ontology’ (1999, 156). White argued that Butler produced a weak ontology of contingent foundations. He identified three ontological forces in Butler's corpus: interpellating power, materialization, and the desire to desire (165). My account differs from White in arguing that Butler's argument is congruent with a specifically theistic ontology.

 9. For discussions of the relationship between theism, masculinity and uncreated generative power see Virginia Burrus (2000) and Nancy Jay (1992).

10. Keller affirmed Butler's attempt to reconcile constructionism and agency and to articulate a non-voluntaristic account of agency; she critiqued Butler's secularist inability to accommodate divine agency (see Keller 2002, 89).

11. Nancy Hirschmann argued that, for Foucault, ‘the colonization of desire and will… is a kind of violence, because it not only coerces individuals, but redefines such coercion as freedom and choice’ (1998, 357). Apart from whether this is an accurate reading of Foucault, the insistence that construction is coercion unwittingly retains the ghost of the sovereign subject and necessitates understanding agency as resistance.

12. Scarry cited instances from the Hebrew Bible, such as Genesis 17:11 (circumcision), Deuteronomy 28, Zechariah 14:12–14 (1985, 199 & 240). Scarry argued that already in the Hebrew Bible there were attempts to counter this opposition of divine and human through ‘passover objects’, i.e. objects authorized by God to represent him and thus alleviate the human body of this burden (238–241). Although Scarry saw Christianity's innovation as consisting of the claim that the divine has a body and that, moreover, that body is in pain (a claim that would seem to fully alleviate the burden of substantiating divine power through hurting human bodies), Christian authors have nonetheless continued to portray divine sovereign power through scenes of hurt bodies. See, for instance, Augustine of Hippo (d. 430): ‘Since God achieves some good by correcting adults through the suffering and death of children who are dear to them, why shouldn't those things take place?’ (Augustine of Hippo 1993, 116). See also Teresa of Ávila (d. 1577):

It [the soul] feels that it is wounded in the most delightful way, but it doesn't learn how or by whom it was wounded. It knows clearly that the wound is something precious and it would never want to be cured. (Teresa of Ávila 1979, 115–116)

13. Similarly, Butler remarked: ‘contemporary forms of political agency… tend to derive political agency from failures in the performative apparatus of power.’ (1997c, 370; emphasis added).

14. Butler affirmed the ‘abiding incongruity of the speaking body, the way in which it exceeds its interpellation, and remains uncontained by any of its acts of speech’ (1997a, 155).

15. Catherine Mills made a similar critique of Butler's tendency to exploit a logical possibility. She noted that Butler saw the limitation of Derrida's project (as opposed to Foucault's) as consisting of the former's reliance upon exploiting a logical possibility, when what is needed is the fabrication of ‘local ideals [which] enhance the sense of politically practical possibilities’. Mills posed this same challenge, in turn, to Butler, asking ‘whether the optimism of the logical possibility of resignification is sufficient to address the practical political questions of continuing systematic domination’, particularly when resistance to such domination risks social suicide (Mills 2000, 277, quoting Butler 1993b, 10–11).

16. On agency as ‘resistance’ see also Butler (1997b, 84).

17. Allison Weir (1996, 118) has made a similar point about the inability to distinguish ‘violations’ in Butler.

18. For a critique of the ‘philosophy of the subject’ see Seyla Benhabib (1986, 10). If one claims that Scarry's insistence on the status of humans as makers betrays residues of the ‘philosophy of the subject’ in Scarry, one would have to answer for these same residues in Butler. What, after all, is one to make of the knowledge that attempts to make transparent the production of subjects? To what in persons is Butler appealing in crafting her political theory of subjection? What does she want readers to do with this knowledge? If persons are able to see into the processes of their making, does this make persons a quite different artifact than other ordinary artifacts, say chairs, constitutions and conversations? Might this difference be a part of the conventions governing agency and consent?

19. Joel Feinberg wrote ‘Any act that crosses the boundaries of a sovereign person's zone of autonomy requires that person's “permission;” otherwise it is wrongful. In this sense, all sovereign persons, like all sovereign nations, have authority over their own realms’ (1986, 177). In the case of consent, one facilitates, indeed authorizes—and thus shares responsibility for—the act of another; Vonti non fit injuria means ‘To the one who consents no wrong is done’ (see also Kleinig 1982, 91 & 96).

20. Compare, for instance, Scarry's account of consent to Benjamin Barber's opposition between individualistic consent and participatory politics (1989, 54–68).

21. According to Locke, because humans are the property of God (for humans are his artifacts) they are unable to become the property of other human beings. See Locke (1960, 311). We are properly subordinate to God in God's being our maker. In this instance, Locke makes a correlation between being made and being subordinate.

22. Locke repeatedly asserted that the protection of bodies is the end of civil society and government (see Locke 1960, 373 & 395). Consent may be said to be the renunciation of sovereignty. In declaring individuals to be ‘sovereign’ (Locke referred to ‘all being Kings’), Locke summoned the very vulnerability he would conclude requires protection. Indeed, Locke was convinced of the inextricability of sovereignty and vulnerability. Although Locke insisted that all persons are bound by the ‘tye’ of reason in the state of nature, and although he portrayed our reasoning capacity as impervious to coercion and injury, he did not trust reason to facilitate care of others and he did not vest sovereignty in reason. Instead, Locke locates sovereignty in the vulnerable tissues of human bodies. According to Locke, one consents to form a political society by dissolving one's individual bodily boundaries and incorporating with others to form one body, the social body. Another way of putting this is that one renounces the sovereignty that was the very cause of one's vulnerability. By expanding the frontiers of sentience, each person's property is protected (i.e. the body and its various extensions).

23. ‘[T]he invented object requires some form of “confirmation” for it cannot be a successful fiction if it is recognizable as fictitious, unreal’ (Scarry 1985, 220; see also 311–312).

24. In her earlier work Scarry (1985, 220) associated ‘making up’ with mental imagining and ‘making real’ with material realization.

25. Judith Butler might counter that by unveiling the constructed character of reality, she revealed the parochial sphere of sentience that is actually served by the presumed objectivity or universality of various constructions. In other words, she would argue that she was making evident what is already the case: that many cultural constructions do not afford a shareable sentience but reflect the needs and interests of a restricted group of elites.

26. Marx wrote:

The mystical character of commodities does not originate, therefore, in their use-value… In order, therefore, to find an analogy, we must have recourse to the mist-enveloped regions of the religious world. In that world the productions of the human brain appear as independent beings endowed with life, and entering into relation both with one another and the human race. So it is in the world of commodities with the product of men's hands. This I call the Fetishism which attaches itself to the products of labor. (2000, 473–474)

27. Interestingly, Butler and Scarry agreed on the idea that consent itself is a fiction or performance. Butler asked:

If supposing and consenting are unthinkable outside of the language of supposing and consenting, and this language is itself a sedimentation of ritual forms… then the act by which we might ‘consent’ to kneel [for instance] is no more and no less ritualistic than the kneeling itself. (1995a, 21)

Butler's comments remind us that the authorizing power of sovereign/vulnerable bodies is itself a fiction—and thus requires the reality-conferring powers of the body. And, indeed, Scarry pointed out that Locke saw the body as the locus of the actual performance of consent. This performative notion of consent is evident in Locke's notion of tacit consent in which one expresses consent to a government by owning property in that jurisdiction (and hence having an extension of one's body within the boundaries of that government), visiting there, traveling through it, or by simply being there (see Locke 1960, 392). We return once again to the reality-conferring power of the body: the body itself substantiates the artifact that has been designed, in this case, to salute and ultimately alleviate the vulnerability of that body.

28. She does not, however, discuss ‘consent’ per se nor elaborate on these two assertions.

29. For a reading of sati as analogous to the sacrifice of Rajput male soldiers see Lindsey Harlan (1992).

30. Lata Mani makes a similar point (see Mani 1990, 36).

31. I think Janaki Nair was getting at a similar point when she wrote that the question of women's agency ‘must be posed within specific contexts and placed along a continuum where various forms of agency may coexist’ (1994, 83). Tracy E. Higgins introduced the term ‘incomplete agency’ in order to convey the idea that women's agency is incomplete relative to men's agency (1997, 1691). I think the term ‘incomplete’ is not helpful here. Despite her qualification, it does suggest some notion of complete agency. Moreover it obscures considerations of race and class. Higgins cited Nancy Hirschmann for thinking about the freedom afforded to persons by their relative power (see Hirschmann 1996, 57).

32. For instance, Scarry argued that differing access to artifacts determines one's agency. The capitalist is able to exploit the reciprocating powers of artifacts. Access to plentiful artifacts makes the capitalist less vulnerable, thus ‘new forms of self-extension can be initiated, acts of initiation that are variously expressed by the words “aspiration”, “desire”, “will”, “risk-taking”, “creation”, and “self-recreation”’. Certainly, these acts are equivalent to agency. Conversely, the worker does not get to exploit the protection and freedom afforded by easy proximity to artifacts. Indeed, the making of artifacts actually depletes the worker of his or her somatic and psychic resources. It is as if the laboured upon artifact is actually a weapon. Consequently, the worker lives closer to the region of pain; the worker is more vulnerable and thus less likely to extend himself or herself outward into the world (Scarry 1985, 262).

33. Stuart Eisenstadt made a similar point when he wrote:

It is the emergence of a common ‘text’, together with the dispersion of centers of power and the decoupling of power, wealth, and prestige that encourages the continual reconstruction of the realm of the political within the framework of given constitutional institutions. (Eisenstadt 1998, 230)

34. The quote continues:

this turning of power against itself to produce alternative modalities of power, to establish a kind of political contestation that is not a ‘pure’ opposition, a ‘transcendence’ of contemporary relations of power, but a difficult labor of forging a future from resources inevitably impure. (Butler 1993a, 241)

35. For other offerings of criteria to assess agency see the relevant works of Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum. Amartya Sen linked agency and well-being in his criteria for a Human Capabilities Index. Although Sen insisted that the two can be distinguished, he also insisted that they are not independent of one another. Moreover, he argued that agency cannot be assessed without an account of the aims and objectives (or conception of the good) of persons (see Sen 1993, 30–53, 1995, 203, 206 & 208). See also Martha Nussbaum's appropriation of Sen in her design of a list of 10 ‘central human functional capabilities’ (2000, 70–86). Nussbaum's list of 10 capabilities has been critiqued for its Western bias, particularly its neo-Aristotelianism and its pretension to universalism. Perhaps my more modest criteria would appeal to her critics.

36. Of course, consent is also figured in religious texts and traditions. See, for example, Michael Walzer's analysis of the biblical covenant as necessitating popular and repeated acts of consent (1985, 80–90).