Agency includes acts neither voluntary nor involuntary but constituted by conflicting self-definitions.

Evidence

The tragedy of Oedipus depicts a story of suffering and disempowerment that is neither voluntary nor involuntary. For Oedipus is an agent who, not knowing what he has done, makes a deep difference in the world. On gradually learning the secret of his past acts he inflicts terrible wounds on the body that performed them, on the self that can neither be recognized nor repudiated. Oedipus’ final acts consist of his public renunciation of kingly power as both expression and consequence of pain. They embody and extend his passion—his agony—not of his conscious intention. Oedipus’ agency is constituted by the conflicting definitions of his predicament that is the outcome of his insistence on uncovering the truth of his origin. The act of disempowering himself is performed because, as the slayer of his father and the husband of his mother (a double transgression, both unknowingly committed), he is the cause of his subjects’ unique suffering, which will cease when he exiles himself from Thebes—that is, when he disempowers himself. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 450

Categorization

• DEFINE: Asad uses Oedipus to redefine agency away from the modern voluntary/intentional model — a category that later frames his critique of secular autonomy.
• XREF: connects to: Agency is best theorized as accomplished social action, not individual autonomy. — Mary Bucholtz and Kira Hall, Identity and Interaction: A…, 114