Ethical reading must choose between qualified agency and historical excess

Evidence

The ethical-instantiation reader must choose between a gendered agency that can speak its desire within gendering, where the narrator reports her (internalized constraint as a version of) fulfilled choice, or a gendered aporia that goes beyond mere (historically contaminated) intention. For our part, a greater responsibility beckons in the instantiation of the possibility that history is in all respects larger than personal goodwill. — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader, 1599

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Ethics abolishes itself when authenticity is found to depend on history — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 551; Agency should not be equated with history-making or self-empowerment — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular:…, 327; Political agency cannot be grasped apart from ethical agency — Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival…, 253

Broader Connections

• Ethics abolishes itself when authenticity is found to depend on history #expands (0.85) — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 551
• Agency should not be equated with history-making or self-empowerment #expands (0.80) — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 327
• Political agency cannot be grasped apart from ethical agency #complicates (0.80) — Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety, 253