The Primacy of Narrative Agency: A Feminist Theory of the Self

260 Pages·2016·1.55 MB·English

The Primacy of Narrative Agency: A Feminist Theory of the
Self

A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor
of Philosophy

Sarah Drews Lucas
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
Department of Philosophy
The University of Sydney
2016
Attribution of Authorship and Statement of Originality

I declare that the research presented here is my own original work and that all the
assistance received in preparing this thesis and sources have been acknowledged. I also
declare that this thesis has not been submitted to any other institution for the award of a
degree. A version of Chapter 3 of this thesis will appear in a forthcoming volume of
Feminist Theory as “The Primacy of Narrative Agency: Re-Reading Seyla Benhabib on
Narrativity”.

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Abstract

Current debates in feminist theory struggle to retain a robust concept of agency in light of
the rejection of an independent and sovereign subject. The purpose of my project is to
articulate a feminist concept of agency for a self that is relational and non-sovereign (i.e.
one that does not equate agency with autonomy) and yet one that remains committed to a
conception of the self as both powerful and unique. Narrative agency, which I
understand as the capacity to say 'I' over time and in relation to others, meets the
challenge of attending to both the inter-relational and the individually empowering
aspects of action. The identity of the ‘I’ is a fleeting configuration of narratives that
differs from moment to moment; but the capacity to say ‘I’ is constant. This definition of
agency is able to account for the extent to which a subject may be constituted by power
relations but is still invested in the subject’s unlimited emancipatory potential. In other
words, a subject, even at the most basic level, may not be free to choose the content of
certain identity-determining narratives, such as gender narratives; however, she always
has the capacity to confront and change those narratives.

My project draws on the work of Hannah Arendt to provide a feminist politics based on
this account of narrative agency. Arendt’s political theory is chiefly concerned with
appearance: agency, for Arendt, involves appearing to another member of a plurality
through speech or action. This basic schematic is relevant to the analysis of several key
aspects of a feminist theory of narrative agency: especially identity, mutual recognition,
solidarity, and judgment. For Arendt, identity is not reducible to a series of markers such
as race or gender but is, instead, indefinite—composed of a mutable set of interests, or
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narratives. A subject is constantly negotiating the articulation of these interests, and yet
she appears to, and is recognised by, others as a unique being. Solidarity, by these lights,
arises not through pre-determined similarities but, rather, interests actively held in
common. Conversations about these shared interests allow individual agents to articulate
and negotiate judgments and opinions. Bringing together these resources from Arendt
and reading them alongside problems of contemporary feminism allows me to endorse
mutual recognition, solidarity, and conversation as vital attributes of an emancipatory
feminist politics.

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Acknowledgements
I would like to extend my wholehearted gratitude to all of the people who have made the
completion of this thesis possible. First and foremost, I would like to think the fiercely
intelligent and generous women of my PhD cohort at the University of Sydney who have
read and responded to my work since the beginning of this project: Millicent Churcher,
Kari Meta-Greenswag, Louise Richardson-Self, Miriam Cosic, Inja Stracenski, Laura
MacDonald, Laura Kotevska, Mara Bollard, Elena Walsh (who is the best listener I have
ever known), and—especially—Lucy Smith, without whom I would be utterly lost.

Thanks also are due to other friends and colleagues in Sydney and around the world who
have been readers and/or supporters over the course of my PhD progress: Nick Malpas,
Yarran Hominh, Melanie White, Zoe Fitzgerald, Eimear Cradock, Anthony Hooper,
Latoya Schadel, Tom Dougherty, Tama Coutts, Rick Benitez, Caroline West, Luke
Russell, Barrell Jones, Katherine Van Steenburgh, Mark David Ashworth, James
Houlihan, Katherine Guild, Cherie Weaver, David Longoria, Red Hunter, Lindsey Boyd,
Alma Gomez, Kristen Schlemmer, Charles Litton, Eileen Jones, Louise Pennebaker,
Alicia Sloan, Ciorsdan Glass, Caroline Lents, Eva Boster, and (my hero) Jessie Lubke.

I am extremely grateful to the Centre for Political Thought at the University of Exeter for
giving me the opportunity to hone my understanding of Political Theory and to deepen
my appreciation of Hannah Arendt. And to the wonderful people I have met in Exeter—
thanks to Terah Walkup, for her delightful friendship and for her invaluable proofreading
skills, to Kate Townsend for her support both emotional and intellectual, and to Jessica
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Fear, Chris Fear, Simon Townsend, and Ross Caroll for their excellent company. Thanks
especially to the Exeter Arendt/Heidegger reading group—Iain Hampsher-Monk, Robin
Durie, Ed Skidelsky, Jack Owen, Andy Schaap, and Zhangmei Tang—for many hours of
productive conversation.

To my supervisors, I cannot possibly express the depth of my gratitude. To Moira
Gatens—whose strength has been my constant motivation—thank you so much for your
patience, your expertise, your guidance, and your tireless encouragement. To Alex
Lefebvre at the University of Sydney, thanks for your humour, your insight, your advice,
and your friendship. To Andy Schaap at the University of Exeter, thanks for your
honesty, your creativity, and your thoughtfulness.

Finally, I want to thank my family for being there for me through this and every other
endeavour. Thank you to my parents, Sandra (who is my greatest feminist role model)
and Richard (from whom I inherited my sense of wonder), who overwhelm me every day
with their unconditional love, their kindness, and their support. Thanks to my dearest
friend, Sarah Gautier, for beginning where I end and ending where I begin. Thanks to my
brother, Randall Lucas, for his open mind and his open heart. Thanks to my grandmother,
Mickie Drews, for her steel magnolia strength and her wicked wit. And most of all to my
partner, Robert Lamb, thank you for reading and commenting on every draft of every
chapter of this project, for your endlessly inspiring conversation, for your courage, and
for your love.
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Table of Contents

Attribution of Authorship
Abstract
Acknowledgements

Introduction…………………………………………………………………….…..10

Part I: Narrative Agency and Narrative Identity

Chapter One: The Stakes of the Agency Debate…………………………...…....…30

1.1 Foundations of the Debate……………………………………….….…34
1.2 The Politics of Ourselves: Between Agency and Subjection…….….....43
1.3 Escaping the Subject-Centred Frame?....................................................50

Chapter Two: Narrative Identity……………………………………………….…...63

2.1 A Narrative Theory of Personal Identity……….....................................66
2.2 Narrative Identity as Practical and Normative…………………............76
2.3 Critiques of Narrative Identity………………………………….……....86
2.3.1 The Ethical Narrativity Thesis……………………….…….....88
2.3.2 Narrative and Identity Politics……………………….….........97

Chapter Three: The Primacy of Narrative Agency………………………………..104

3.1 Narrative Agency as Primary…………………………………….........106
3.2 The Gender Objection…………………………………………………113
3.3 The Communicability Objection………………………………………121

Part II: Narrative Agency and Feminist Politics

Chapter Four: Feminist Resources in Hannah Arendt…………………..................135

4.1 Hannah Arendt and Identity Politics…………………………………...136
4.2 Conditions for Narrative Agency…..…………………………..............141
4.2.1 Plurality..……………………………………………………..142
4.2.2 Natality……………………………………………………….150
4.2.3 Narrativity……….……….…………………………………..154
4.3 Toward a Model of Feminist Politics………………..………………....160

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Chapter Five: A New Feminist Theory of Judgment………………………………..167

5.1 Enlarged Thinking: Arendt on Kant…………………………………......171
5.2 A Feminist Theory of Judgment?..............................................................179
5.3 Practices of Freedom vs. Communicative Freedom………………..........189
5.4 Communicating the Harm of Rape………………………………………200
Chapter Six: Loneliness as the Lack of Narrative Agency…………………………..209
6.1 Arendt on Loneliness in Totalitarianism…………………………............211
6.2 Ontological Agency: Agency as Appearance…………………………….218
6.3 Political Agency: Preserving the World of Action……………………….227
6.4 Agency in Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels..………………………...232
Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………238
References…………………………………………………………………………….247

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Take the unknowable more seriously than anyone ever has, because most women have
died without a trace; but invent the capacity to act, because otherwise women will
continue to.

- Catharine MacKinnon

The conditions of human existence—life itself, natality and mortality, worldliness,
plurality, and the earth—can never ‘explain’ what we are or answer the question of who
we are for the simple reason that they can never condition us absolutely.

- Hannah Arendt

It’s the people who love us or hate us—or both—who hold together the thousands of
fragments we are made of.

- Elena Ferrante

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Introduction

In a popular 2009 talk, the Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie relates two
anecdotes that illustrate the error involved in reducing other human beings to ‘a single
story’. The first is an account of her childhood conception of Fide, a boy who worked for
her family, as entirely defined by his poverty. All that she knew about Fide was that he
was poor—her mother sent food home with him and used stories of his poverty to guilt
her and her siblings into finishing their own dinners. And so when Adichie visited Fide’s
home and was shown a basket woven by Fide’s brother, she was shocked that someone so
disadvantaged was able to make something so beautiful. In the second story, Adichie
attends college in the United States and is a shock to her roommate, who had expected an
entirely incomprehensible ‘African’ rather than someone with Adichie’s American taste
in music and perfect English. Adichie perceived that this roommate had ‘felt sorry for
[her] even before she saw [her]’, and that all she could see (at first) of Adichie was
entirely defined by the story she knew of Africa—an exotic and deprived place.1
Both of these stories illustrate what happens when we fail to recognise that people
are agents, where being an agent means both being constituted by an impossibly complex
matrix of stories and having any number of stories of one’s own to tell. Possibilities for
recognising one another as agents are at the heart of this project: I am convinced that we
must prioritise these in order to effect social change. So often we are blinded to the
agency of others by an assumption that agency is equivalent to perfect freedom of choice
or to the absence of coercion. We are prone to see people, as Kimberley Hutchings puts
it, as ‘choosers or losers’ rather than as consistently beset both by the capacity to act and

1 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, “The Danger of a Single Story”, TED 2009.
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