We inhabit an era of accelerated pace and a precarity of being that rivals vulnerabilities encountered regularly by the Greek polis. And yet our operative conceptions of political agency have yet to catch up with this condition. Drawing initially upon Sophocles and Lucretius, this study seeks to retune modern models of agency to fit the late-modern condition. As you work creatively upon Sophocles to appreciate the swerve in Lucretius, the wisdom of minor characters in his tragic trilogy becomes even more visible, particularly as they respond with flexibility and insight to surprising events and binds. We next turn to Catherine Malabou’s exploration of body/brain ;;plasticity”, to bolster and extend these insights. Friedrich Nietzsche is drawn upon to teach us the importance of periodic hesitation, as we allow multifarious intensities to work upon us in the hopes that a new, creative response will bubble up to respond to an uncanny event. The focus on flexibility, plasticity, periodic hesitation, creativity, and cultivation of existential gratitude is carried into contemporary life through an analysis of media techniques adopted by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. By parodying the rhythm, pace and tone of news programs, these commentators teach us both how the media work on the passive syntheses that infuse agency and how we can turn its operations into creative political thinking and action. The study ends by examining Machiavelli on the precarious relations between virtu and fortuna through the lens of these strategies, doing so to retune our practices of political agency.
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Bend, Engage, Wait, and Watch: Rethinking Political Agency in a World of Flows
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