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Against Agency: The Fiction of the Autonomous Self
The provided text consists of excerpts from an essay by independent scholar Bry Willis titled "Against Agency: The Fiction of the Autonomous Self," which challenges the foundational Enlightenment concept of the sovereign, autonomous human agent. The author argues that "agency" is a necessary fiction used to maintain modern institutions like courts, markets, and liberal politics by enabling systems of retribution, debt, and blame. Willis proposes replacing the binary concept of agency with a "gradient model" of "differential responsiveness," defining action as a scalar capacity for response…
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