In times such as our own, in this postmodern disintegration of metanarrative, it is important to return to fundamental questions. Fundamental questions which return us to the foundational insights about the world, and the way in which we are to engage with it.
One of those fundamental questions regards the relationship between agency and structure.
We (modern humans) have the tendency to become compulsively consumed with the structures of the world. These may be our work lives, our social lives, our grasp on language, our grasp on knowledge or our commitment to the political-economic climate. We drink our coffee, play our music and immerse ourselves into the structures constituting our lives.
Finding ‘meaning’ in compulsion towards the structure – we presuppose our awareness of the Being preceding the structure. This Being is nothing less than the animating value of our own agency.
Our naïve presupposition takes the form of an obfuscation, or a forgetfulness of our own animating consciousness.
We presuppose our awareness of the Being preceding the structure. This Being is nothing less than the animating value of our own agency
There are many material issues which we must focus on today in order to create a better tomorrow. These are (and not limited to): resource availability, environmental degradation, social inequality, global warfare, etc.
In a panaceatic reduction of the matter, the majority of these material issues wind up in the intersectional crosshairs of issues related to global capitalism (particularly its neoliberal late-stage). This much is clear if we heed the warnings of the Ivory Tower, the same insights which indicated the unsustainable nature of our global economy in the 1970s. In 2022, as the specter of Climate Change materializes in greater and greater force, surely we recognize that it would have been wise to heed the academic warnings of the 1970s.
Regardless of the material prospects, there is this fundamental question which remains. What is the individual human’s (agent) relationship to the structures which bind them?
What unfolds for us in this inquiry are two pathways. One being the choice to live compulsively consumed by the structure of the matter (as a reactional animal / automaton). The other being to return to the seat of consciousness in order to develop wiser methods for our integration with the structure of the world.
In what follows here, I lay out the field of discourse and make a curious discovery… that the existence of agency represents the embrace of free will.
The Field of Discourse
The question of structure and agency boils down to this: it is an inquiry into the relationship between the subject (or primitive consciousness), to the structures which bind it.
It would be a gross reduction to say that the agent-structure dialectic is the same as the subject-object dialectic. While the prior addresses the relationship between Being and the patterns of her environment, the latter touches upon a more essential question regarding the nature of the relationship between ourselves and the world in sum. To know more about this latter topic, I would refer the reader to the systematic works of German Idealism.
You would think that in order to access the discussion of agency & structure, you would have to study the entire discourse of structuralism, poststructuralism, structuration, and agency as has emerged from the Modern Western Tradition through the writings of Ferdinand de Saussure, Claude Levi-Strauss, Louis Althusser, Jaques Derrida, Anthony Giddens and so on… but, to do this following such a method of inquiry would be to set the cart before the horse – the structure preceding the agent – the structural lineage of knowledge determining the liberties of agency.
By the time you finished consuming this structural lineage of knowledge, you would be nothing more than a regurgitating encyclopedia.
We are not interested in being this, because we are more interested in understanding the relationship between agency-and-structure.
Does Agency Exist?
Structure is the objective apprehension of the very affordance of being. This affordance of being is the constitution of the universe which makes being human possible. It is both natural (physiological, chemical, physical, biological) and social (linguistic, cultural, historical, institutional). I am able to speak both because I have a throat and tongue (natural), and also, because I understand the language game (social). We cannot deny that these structures have a foundational role in our material existence.
Agency then, is the Being-ness which exists amongst the structure. It is the Being sauntering this way and that, deciding what to make of the structure, or perhaps, freely deciding what to observe, play, eat, think, or hear.
Structure makes our life possible and it projects modes of reality (limitations and affordances) upon us like phenomenal vectors. Structure is both constituting and invasive.
Agency is the indeterminate node which is both constituted and invazed, and which has a mobility all of its own. While it is structured, it is liberated from structure altogether.
Think of a youth who was programmed to believe that he needed to have a serious job, fit in, and live according to the rule of law, the same youth who one day wakes up and realizes that he can actually be a troubadour or a bandit regardless of what he was taught. He has subverted his structure due to the awareness of his liberty.
The Saddus of the Indian Subcontinent are representative as well of agency in that they take the ascetic liberty to subvert biological and social needs in exchange for spiritual attainment.
Agency is the indeterminate node which is both constituted and invazed, and which has a mobility all of its own. While it is structured, it is liberated from structure altogether.
Furthermore, in the 21st century, the transgressional powers of technology & medicine have allowed human needs & desires to outmaneuver the structures which bind us (physical & biological).
The field of observation then becomes clear, and we return to our guiding question. What is the relationship between structure-and-agency?
The next question we should ask is, does the agent even exist?
Are we all predetermined automatons, biologically and socially programmed beings – iterations of the structure – fractalic nodes – who don’t actually affect anything?
The profundity of this question cannot be overstated, as it really asks the question, is there free will or not? If the world is all structured – a long winded story of cause and effect – then what is the purpose of life? I can literally do anything and it doesn’t matter because what I do is not my choice, but merely my programming (whether that be biologically determined or socially constructed).
If you believe this, then I suppose the question and the article has been settled. We are all determined by our structure, and we don’t have to do anything. Life is in a sense meaningless and we can float free of responsibility for nothing we do is our choice, we are a living automaton.
Now, if there is a part of you which hesitates at this view- a certain spark of recognition which lights up in the darkness of such a mechanized nihilism, then keep reading… I leave the choice to you and your own investigations.
The Indication of Free Will
Now then, what is this spark that gives our life meaning, autonomy, and free will? How is it that this spark of animation finds itself separated from structure with the dual choice of living in ignorance, or embracing its own light?
This agency we encounter is free will. It is the ability within us to transgress the boundaries of structure, to become aware of Being amongst structure, and to affect structure with conscious premeditation… this agency seated in the heart of consciousness, lives a dual life, a node in the determined structure liberated to (re)structure the world in any way it likes.
What this free will unfortunately indicates, is responsibility. It indicates that because we are consciously aware of our freedom, that we must choose what we are to do. We are indeed (at least partially) responsible for our actions.
This responsibility is indeed, no small weight to bear. Its significance is so weighty in fact that many of us are pushed by compulsion towards identification with structure. This is because we feel that the resolution of this responsibility must occur on the structural plane in order to have significance. This leads us to either a complete identification with structure, or at least a large subsumption within it.
Recognizing that we are responsible for our lives, we decide we must do what is right according to some ascribed hierarchy or order.
But this ascribed hierarchy and order… these ‘dogmas’ we tell ourselves… were they uncovered by our free will or are they the continued compulsion of our identification with structure.
There is a very fine line which I am indicating… this fine line being the autonomous revelation of consciousness. For it seems to me, our subsumption into structure at the presupposition of our agency, is to slide into the ignorance consciousness – the gift of life.
In the next article(s) I want to encounter the free will in greater intimacy. On the whole I’m going to simply continue these investigations… some questions I want to answer are (i) to what degree do we need to react to structure (ii) what is the free will / agency / consciousness (iii) what is the potential of agency for re-shaping the world.
Dom do Espírito
Au revoir my friends,