Critical theory’s focus on agency has neglected the question of submission

Evidence

It is remarkable that the importance of subjectivity and subjection, as well as the reflections on agency that continue to dominate the field of cultural studies, have not brought about more considerations of what submission might mean, or more precisely, what its sense and meaning might be. If, as Butler also argues, “power assumes this present character” by performing “a break with what has come before” and by dissimulating “as a self-inaugurating agency” (16), if, in other words, power dissimulates as agency, then what of “what has come before” as another power, as the other of power? If the agenda continues to be to articulate a theory of agency and freedom, to articulate a theory of formation, the making and the giving of form to the matter at hand, it would seem unsurprisingly necessary to address as well the question of passivity and of submission, perhaps of absolute submission, if only to determine what it is that we-and power itself, in its dissimulation-appear to want to escape, to emancipate ourselves from, by way of acts, action, formation, production, labor, praxis and work. “Is it useless to revolt?”- as Foucault’s title had it-remains the question: Is agency possible? — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 117

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Butler’s The Psychic Life of Power and Foucault’s ‘Is It Useless to Revolt?’ — a genealogy of the agency/subjection debate in cultural studies.