Traces of the Dead, Actions of the Not-Alive: A Prologue to a Theory of Agentification

The author describes how sociological and philosophical discussions of agency tend to center questions of how or why people are agentic rather than who or what is agentic. In contrast, the author poses questions about the agency of things, the agency of non-humans, and the agency of dead humans, using three examples of historical traces—Washington’s refusal of a third term, Jenner’s development of the smallpox vaccines, and Smith’s publication of The Wealth of Nations—as historical examples to examine how non-humans and non-living-humans leave traces that can experienced as agentic. The author then analyzes six theories of agency that might provide explanations for these actions (actants, affordances, switchmen, residue, repression, and ghosts) before turning to his earlier work on the concept of “external authorities.”