I had so many questions while reading Cooper’s Rhetorical Agency as Emergent and Enacted. This is a good thing because I found the subject matter so fascinating as it delves into this kind of mindful thinking that our minds and souls are separate from our bodies. This idea of the “death of the subject” really got me thinking about how one’s intentions and free will does not bring out change, but that change is brought out when individuals realize that their actions are their own and that agency isn’t embodied or singled out to specific acts. I’m confused at the sentence I just wrote because I’m still trying to figure this out! What my understanding is that change occurs with the mental unease a person feels as their agents interact with other agents. But if agents aren’t aware of their intentions and their agency doesn’t arise from their acts, then how does what they do matter at all? If we kill the subject, the rational self, what are we as humans? Just agents living without a soul? You should see my notes on this reading, it’ll tell you how much my mind went around in circles.

So agency is not something that someone can possess because it is embodied through the behaviors, traits, and actions we experience as we live. They are emergent in the way that we inhabit the role/position of an agent. So the bottom line seems to be that we don’t have agency, we’re just agents.

So once we are rid of the “self,” all our experiences go through a filter and we create meaning out of them. So we become known as agents when we start using rhetoric to deal with the world. Agency cannot be attained physically. Change is described as a product of interactions in complex situations so agents can change without ever trying just because of the fact that their their natural response is to change based on the experiences they have in life. Their self-organizing nature allows them to be ordinary people doing ordinary things. Rhetorical agency arrives at the intersection of an a-ha moment and a mental “perturbation” as Cooper states. The epiphany allows the agent to realize in the opportune moment that everything is a part of a larger narrative and we are small stories of a bigger picture. It comes from the complex systems of a person becoming who they are as a person– through emotions, memories, and dispositions.

So agents are perceivers and they are structured so that they think about the consequences of their actions. Is emergent rhetoric brought on by an event, but not past experiences? Can we separate our knowledge of what meaning we made from past experiences from creating new meaning of a similar experience? This reading was deep and it was great, but I’m not sure that I actually understood all of it to be honest. I’m looking forward to reading what other peoples’ interpretations are.