Discourse and gibbons

[P. Kerim Friedman]

On 11/14/02 8:28 PM, "Celso Alvarez Cáccamo" <lxalvarz at udc.es> wrote:

> To me "agency" is only human agency. "Behavior" encompasses what other
> animals do (and ourselves) well enough. I won't even try to define "agency"
> either, but to me it has to do with reflexive, goal-oriented ability to
> transform social contexts.

Reflexive is hard to prove - but goal oriented ability to transform social
contexts seems to be something that animals do have (or at least I am
convinced that they do). At least certain mammals and higher primates. As I
said, studies of primate behavior reveal very complex social behaviors and
attempts to manipulate and modify them. What we might call "politics".

Reflexive is the part I have problems with - since it seems to
tautologically require language to be a part of agency. Only if they can say
"I am doing X because of Y" (at least think it) are you willing to admit
this social behavior is "agency"? Is it possible to have reflexivity without
language? I can't think what this would mean, and so I was calling into
question this "language-centric" definition of agency.

My point about Iraq was that we often engage in behavior that is a pure
expression of power, and only attempt to *justify* it through "reflexive"
discussion. In other words, we may over-value human reflexivity as a part of
human agency. I'm not taking the stance that human's don't engage in
reflexive action - just that we may not do so nearly as much as we think. Of
course, the fact that this action is, itself, linguistically mediated is an
important point and does define what makes us humans unique from other
species.

kerim


>
>> A more interesting question (for me) is why we believe that language=thought.
>
> Well, who believes that?

See above.


--
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P. Kerim Friedman

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http://kerim.oxus.net
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