“If we do not know just how it is that human agency operates, how can we be so sure that the processes through which nonhumans make their mark are qualitatively different?” (34)
Do you agree that we do not really understand human agency, does it matter if we do not, and why should this pertain to nonhumans?
I do not think that the process of object agency is different from human agency because agency is not a consistent and independently manifested force. I do not think that we are able to understand how agency operates. The desire to “advance a plan or intention” is brought upon us by the cooperation of actants which can be both human and nonhuman. For this reason, agency is a combination of both human and non-human events, intentions and impulses. Agency is independent from humans and non-humans and all objects in general. I think that we may give more significance to human agency because we are incredibly self-aware and over-complicate our own agency which is really just pure and natural impulse that all objects (human and non human) possess. Bennett says it best at the end of the chapter on page 34 about Arendt’s view of human intention and how we give our own agency more significant than object agency: “Once again, human intentionality is positioned as the most important of all agential factors, the bearer of an exceptional kind of power.”
I agree with Aubrey initially. The human concept of ‘agency’ is one largely constructed of our own narcissism. Any attempt to understand such ‘agency’ will simply be a perpetual construction in which layers upon layers of human centralism are compounded to created a false sense of understanding.
I really appreciate how Bennett posits the concept of ‘capacity’ versus ‘agency’ in which the term agency seems to infer intention and capacity aligns itself with natural trajectory. Her reference to the Chinese tradition of ‘shi’ defines this trajectory , this capacity, not as agency, but as potential which is illuminated or realized through the interaction of various actants or assemblages.
I understand human agency as a construct, and yes, I believe we can understand it to the extent that we figure agency as just that a construct. No, in my opinion, nothing really matters in the long run and our discourses on meaning –and agency–are entirely a means of feeding or supplicating to our own narcissism that we are ‘able’ to understand anything.
I can’t help but look at this from a scientific standpoint. If I am reading this correctly, humans act the way humans do because of the way their brains operate, ergo, the chemical and neurological reactions that determine what they think, feel, do, and say, and may other agencies, if I’m on the right track.
There are other things such as animals that work very similarly, but for inanimate thing-power, we have to toss aside all that logic to make room for this theory that non-human things have some sort of agency that we have not tapped into yet, even if we’ve examined it under a microscope or taken samples or done tests. It seems like the theory is suggesting that there is something else that makes that object significant, and it is not its lack of neurological functioning.
If we don’t really understand our -human- agency, then it’s impossible to come to a conclusion on non-human agency.
Humans like to think they understand themselves, or at least think that that they can begin to, but like Mary Beth said, layers of human centralism will surely create a falsified understanding. This falsified understanding of human agency is important because surely it will corrupt our ideas of non-human agency, because they aren’t as seemingly able as us, and when we compile our collective consciousness of narcissism, overblown concepts of our own self worth, and this falsified understanding, we’ll see non human objects as inherently lesser. This, however, isn’t necessarily true, considering the agency we’re prescribing to ourselves is inherently flawed, as stated earlier, all notions of non human agency which stem from it are, in turn, inherently flawed as well. No, I don’t think it’s important in the grand scheme of things, but it is highly important to be aware of if we plan to look at objects as proponents of agency in a more objective light.