Theatrical agency is a model of partial subjectivity without full self-ownership

Evidence

Agency also has a theatrical context. Here the professional actor tries to set her self aside and inhabit the somatic world of her character—her gestures, passions, and desires. The actor’s agency consists not in the actions of the role she performs but in her ability to disempower one self for the sake of another. … In an important sense the actor is a part subject; her actions are not fully her own. That she is not the author of the story doesn’t mean that she is therefore its passive object. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 364

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘part subject’ who acts without authoring her own story offers a non-liberal model of agency — highly relevant to how Asad will frame Muslim religious practice (performance within tradition) against the liberal autonomous self.
• DEFINE: Asad introduces ‘part subject’ as an alternative to full autonomous individuality — a concept that does real work later in his analysis of tradition-bound agency.