Total systems change, and human agency’s effects often subvert its intentions

Evidence

The point is that systems, even total systems, change; but the question about the tendencies and the laws of motion of that change is also accompanied by the relatively distinct question of the role of human agency in the process (which may, of course, by a Hegelian “ruse of history” end up doing something very different from what it “intended”). — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 467

Categorization

• XREF: The Hegelian ‘ruse of history’ bears directly on the reader’s question of whether a totalizing ‘cultural dominant’ thesis is falsifiable — if human agency systematically produces outcomes different from intentions, then testing any such thesis requires care about whose intentions count. — connects to: Technological change explains oppression only when human ambition projects new demands onto it — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 147; Qualitative change would catastrophically transform prevailing technical rationality — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 802; Macro political shifts reshape how commoners understand their needs and practices — Yael Arbell, The Circle of Commoning:…, 59 (+6 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Technological change explains oppression only when human ambition projects new demands onto it — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 147; Qualitative change would catastrophically transform prevailing technical rationality — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 802; Macro political shifts reshape how commoners understand their needs and practices — Yael Arbell, The Circle of Commoning:…, 59 (+6 more)