Agency, Subjectivity and Community:

Michel Foucault and Judith Butler on Ethics and the Self

by
Marcus Weakley
ABSTRACT
Agency is a decisive factor in being able to live free from coercion. This talk
looks at how agency is constituted during strong ethical problems: instances
when the precedents in my way of life that typically provided a course of action
are insufficient for the situation at hand. In that these times hopefully provide
an example of those that instigate a critical reflection where previously was
unproblematic conviction, practice or the following of a norm, I want to provide
an explanation as to what it means to command agency given social conditions
of power and knowledge. After this, it is important to look at not only how risk
and vulnerability are a part of the process of commanding agency but how
creativity can work hand in hand with critique to transform dominant, violating
or stagnant relations. Expanding on work by Michel Foucault and Judith Butler,
I hope to begin to touch on the problem of constituting agency, focusing on the
import this process has on living a life of critical engagement and reciprocal
relationality.
Does an artist ever paint on a blank canvas, a writer write on a blank
page, or a human live, act and choose in a void? We are formed in a social
world, and we cannot live from a place beyond this formation when we are faced
with ethical problems. I would like to distinguish, for the sake of the talk,
between general ethical problems and what I would like to call strong ethical
problems. By general ethical problems I mean very simply, when the questions
of what I should do or how I should live pose a problem for me. Strong ethical
problems, on the other hand, are those instances when the precedents in my
way of life that typically provided a course of action are insufficient for the
situation at hand. They are when my preestablished answers are inadequate.

This differs from when there is merely a discrepancy between what I want to do
or how I want to live, with what is done around me or is expected of
me. Strong ethical problems hopefully instigate a critical reflection where
previously was unproblematic conviction, practice or the following of a norm.
This talk is about possible responses- from a strong, critical position- for
those who do not wish to accept the world as it was given to them, who want to
work to change it and themselves through one of the greatest tools we have to
do this: our actions. If we are simultaneously constituted and dispossessed by
our relations in situations of strong ethical problems, as I suggest, philosophy
cannot do the living for us. It can, however, provide the critical, reflective space
through which to critique social conditions that limit autonomy. Through a life
of this type of critique, as well as other complementary activities, we, with
greater agency, might be able to work with these conditions, and even begin to
expand or transform them. Taking on only a part of this here, I hope to do some
explanatory work on two points: firstly, how social conditions limit agency and
make its realization an accomplishment, and, secondly, how the risk and
vulnerability embedded in some of our relations play a vital role in constituting
or expanding our agency when we are faced with strong ethical problems.

How we relate to the social norms of our milieu is a big part of what
individuality means in ethics. What is an individual within this dynamic?
These instances where strong problems arise point to a difference, a discrepancy,
expressed through an I that reflects on itself and its situation, norms and various
relations. This could just be reflective consciousness, something that does not
necessarily have to be individuality, and this is where the difference to norms
varies from the mere difference of one person to another. Individuation must

be a process unique from just mere difference if it is to be unique from reflective

consciousness in a society. There must be some degree of autonomy, and in
ethics this would be in agency. For me to be an individual, I must be
autonomous enough from social norms to have feelings or thoughts that are not
fully inspired by or enclosed within these norms. Further, for me to be an
individual ethically, someone who is able to act and respond in relation to a
strong ethical problem in a way that does not just uncritically reproduce a norm,
I must have some degree of agency. The questions then become, how much
agency; and, how does one command it in this way? This is the specific definition of
individuality I would like to utilize, given our embeddedness in social norms.
Of course, when I reflect on what I should do, I have some degree of
autonomy. This seems straight forward, at least phenomenologically.1 The
challenge comes when I question why I have the choices I do. Are they
determined by something? Does my knowledge, or lack thereof, limit the
possibility of even thinking various things? Do various relations of which I am a
part limit my choices? Does power working through these relations, from
institutions to my closer relationships, limit my choices? The point is not that
they are limited at all but that if we do not question why we have the choices we
do, in the way we have them, we are not autonomous: even if we have great
political or economic freedom. What matters here is that our choices are only
partly our own- at best- no matter how much they may feel like they are our
own. And this is why Foucault centralized power. Power is present in all of
these conditions, from familial and romantic to economic and political, and it is
one of the major traceable constitutive elements in specific situations. Power is

relational, and we, as agents or persons, participate in these relations and the
expressions of power they entail, even if we do not act. They constitute us and
we further constitute them through our participation. Correspondingly, since
we are participatory, we should be able to affect some of them, maybe even
causally. The constitutive elements of conditions and the means of their
transformation or maintenance are why I am interested in agency as a problem.
Forming our lives and, possibly, our society into something closer to what we
actually want instead of what was given to us depends upon reworking these
conditions.

Initially, in many cases, we are not even aware of the limitations as

limitations. It takes some sort of critical reflection or encounter with a
destabilizing ethical problem to recognize that our present situation, through its
field of choices, knowledge and power, is limiting. There are most likely many
ways this can happen, and not enough time to discuss them now. Foucault
refers to the process of freeing oneself from a dominant or violating limitation as
liberation. When I understand a limitation as part of, or encompassed by, a
condition or set of conditions that make it problematic and transform it, or in
some other way no longer allow this to be a limitation, I have liberated myself.
Then, in this newly opened space of freedom, there are new conditions that I
affect and am affected by. Consequently, I must continue to critically reflect on
my relations in this new space with its new possibilities for expression
Foucault wants us to avoid thinking of freedom as something that, once
realized, releases us from all dangers. Dangers are ongoing even after one

1
For the purposes of this paper, I am not going to engage in the debate on free
will. Instead, I consciously assume it to begin a discussion on agency within

reaches a concrete point of liberation. Liberation, if not treated with caution,

often leads to the idea that one is simply liberating a human nature that, as a
consequence of certain historical, economic, and social processes, has been
concealed, alienated, or imprisoned in and by mechanisms of
repression.2 Within this model, once I am liberated from these oppressive
forces, my true self has been liberated as well, leaving nothing in the way for me
to fully actualize, realize, know and be my true self. Instead, if I want to
continue to expand my agency even in newly opened spaces of freedom, I must
maintain the critical relation of what and how the conditions of my milieu limit
what they do. I am still being constituted by and constituting these conditions,
and will need to choose and live critically.
There are two things about our relations that even living critically cannot
fully address. The first is that it is farfetched to assume we will ever get to the
point of such knowledge and self-awareness that we will know everything there
is to know about the relations of which we are a part. Secondly, when we care
about the relations in which we are involved, they dispossess us: we are lost in
their pleasure and pain, in the relations themselves, or the loss of them. We
risk ourselves and make ourselves vulnerable when we care or venture into the
unknown. Every condition or relation may not be recuperable or knowable but,
nonetheless, in our responses to the strong ethical problems we face we still
regularly have to act and risk ourselves, uncertain of the outcome, of knowing
exactly what we want, what is the right thing to do, or how others relate to us.
There are always at least two parts to these relations: the relation I have
to myself, and my relation to the institutionalized form of power and knowledge

relationality.
2
Foucault, Concern for Self, p. 282.

to which I must relate. Relations institutionalize and form often extraordinarily

strong blocks through which a particular expression homogenizes and
normalizes what was a space for dynamic expression. I doubt I will ever be able
to know in an all-encompassing way both my relation to myself and to that to
which I am relating, not only because they are both dynamics but also because
of the obstacles that come with fully knowing the relation another has with me.
These are part of what I relate to and, as empathetic as I might be, to put myself
in everyones shoes as dynamics change while still staying in my own is too
much to ask of anyone realistically. Clearly then, the point is not perfection but
that this is a process; risk and vulnerability are a part of relations that remain
partly unknown or that hold us, that enmesh with us through our care and
concern, our experience of beauty3, or our most difficult moments.
What does this risk look like, what does it entail? Butler writes that an
essential part of it is that the relation holds us in ways we cannot always explain
or remember; they, or parts of them at least, exist on the border of language.
She also writes that they, interrupt the self-conscious account of ourselves we
might try to provide, in ways that challenge the very notion of ourselves as
autonomous and in control.4 If these relations are full of risk and vulnerability
thanks to the commitment our care makes of the parts of ourselves that we
value, this is only the start. Risk and vulnerability are a more fundamental part
of social life. Expressing a way of life, an ethics or a power relation defiant of
the dominant social forms is a risk precisely because of how much we are
formed with, and are dependent upon, others. For example, Butler asserts that
our bodies are not ours from the start, and only become so when we make them

3
I threw that in there to more or less say that experiencing beauty is
unpredictable. There is something singular about the experience of beauty.

so, if we ever do. They are exposed, to the gaze of others, but also to touch, to
violence, and bodies put us at risk of becoming the agency and instrument of all
of these as well. 5 The social relations that form us are not only descriptive and
historical facts but also ongoing normative forces in our social lives.
One of the most important aspects of what makes social relations
normative in our constitution has to do with how their ability to limit and
condition affects what autonomy is and means for us. Butler asserts that,
When we think about who we are and seek to represent ourselves, we
cannot represent ourselves as merely bounded beings, for the primary
others who are past for me not only live on in the fiber of the boundary
that contains me, but they also haunt the way I am, as it were,
periodically undone and open to becoming unbounded.6
The others that made up, and those who continue to make up, our primary
social relations, are a part of us in that they form- along with other factors- the
boundaries that bind us. They are also part of the reason for the ongoing risk
and vulnerability that continually make up social life: firstly, through, the way
we care for those closest to us, and, secondly, by the fact that so many others are
responsible for my becoming a thinking and feeling a creature who continues to
rely on people outside of me for a variety of needs. This might seem obvious,
but in that our hearts and minds as well as our bodies are formed within social
relations- as I willingly assert- we risk them when we move away from
homogeneity or the dominant view: something which is often essential when

4
Butler, Vulnerability, 23.
5
The body has its invariably public dimension. Constituted as a social
phenomenon in the public sphere, my body is and is not mine. Given over from
the start to the world of others, it bears their imprint, is formed within the
crucible of social life; only later, and with some uncertainty, do I lay claim to my
body as my own, if, in fact, I ever do.(26)
6
Butler, Vulnerability, 27-8.

faced with strong ethical problems. As we address and possibly reshape these
relations, our risk and vulnerability affect the power/knowledge of our milieu.

Foucaults response to the situation of a strong ethical problem would

most likely be similar to his approach for ethical life in general: one of critical
engagement and reciprocal relationality. A life of critical engagement limits, and
makes more actively our own, the way and extent to which we participate in the
power relations and forms of knowledge that define our lives and society. It is
through this process of critique that we make actions that are now too easy
more difficult, and start to expand our agency towards transforming our
relations. The goal for the transformation is to move towards greater and
greater reciprocity in our relations, thus continually working to limit the
possibility for, and actuality of, domination and violation through them. He
sees this in the creation and embodiment of new economies of power relations
through a strong ability to break from homogeneity, and ground autonomy.
One of the main avenues for reciprocity that both Foucault and
Butler propose is creativity. After recognizing ourselves as sites where
social conditions are formed and transformed, if we want to actively
participate in this process, creativity is a tool for we whose traditions,
codes and norms no longer are sufficient to deal with important life
situations such as strong ethical problems. One of the implications of a
strong ethical problem is that the person we thought we were is suddenly
confronted in a way that requires us to question the account we provideboth to ourselves and to others- of who we are. We experience vividly
that we constitute and are constituted by our actions, relations and
milieu, and that this is not given to us in some pure form from the outset:

it is something we can relate to creatively. To change, in this context, is

to work from and through this open space of the way we relate to
ourselves.
The form of creativity to which Foucault and Butler are referring is not
something done by people with extraordinary creative abilities but more
fundamentally comes down to the way we relate to ourselves. Foucault writes,
we should not have to refer the creative activity of somebody to the kind of
relation he has to himself, but should relate the kind of relation one has to
oneself to a creative activity.7 The distinction that the relation one has to
oneself should guide creativity is vital. The creative process becomes a practice,
a daily making of art, a relation between the relation one has with oneself and
the world.8 It is a concrete conception of freedom. The work we do on
ourselves, the relation we have with ourselves, relates to everything else.9
In a sense this is an appropriation of Nietzsches famous giving of style
to ones life and of an Ancient Greek form of ethical practice. However,
Foucault does not feel these sorts of examples are directly applicable to other
times but are part of a plethora of resources that have existed over human
history from which we can learn. Part of being creative also means that we can

7
Michel Foucault, On the Genealogy of Ethics, in Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth,
ed. Paul Rabinow and trans. Robert Hurley, et. al. (New York: The New Press,
1997), 262.
8
Foucault, Concern for Self, 286. A persons ethos was evident in his
clothing, appearance, gait, in the calm with which he responded to every event,
and so on. For the Greeks, this was the concrete form of freedom; this was the
way they problematized their freedom.But extensive work by the self on the
self is required for this practice of freedom...
9
Foucault, Concern for Self, 287. The care of the self is ethical in itself; but
it implies complex relationships with others insofar as this ethos of freedom is

apply these resources in creative ways in the present. He writes,

One can comport oneself towards oneself in the role of a technician, of a
craftsman, of an artist, who from time to time stops working, examines
what he is doing, reminds himself of the rules of the art, and compares
these rules with what he has achieved so far.10
There are rules to the art, and a technician, a craftsman and an artist all create
differently and apply their work to the matter at hand differently. This, I think,
nicely encapsulates what a creative life like that we have been exploring might
look like: different resources and expressions will be needed for different
situations. The creative dynamism is not purely an aesthetic existence. Values
are not formed meaninglessly, but their expression is allowed a greater freedom.
Along these lines, who I am might just be some sort of conglomeration
of all of the relations of my life including the one I have with myself. This
means not only my history but also the way I relate to my history, not only my
social position but how I relate to it as well, etcetera. The internal relation
mentioned earlier and its expression in a life, in conjunction with ongoing
critiques of our social conditions, is the utmost reappropriation of dominant or
violating power relations, means of constituting and expanding agency, a way to
ground individual and collective autonomy, and a viable form of living a life both
reflective of ones ongoing, meaningful values and creative in their expressions.

To conclude, and returning to Butlers earlier points on interdependence

and vulnerability, she asks an important question for this inquiry. She writes,
If I am struggling for autonomy, do I not need to be struggling for
something else as well, a conception of myself as invariably in

also a way of caring for others The care of the self is ethically prior in that the
relationship with oneself is ontologically prior.
10
Foucault, Fearless Speech, 166.

community, impressed upon by others, impinging upon them as well, and

in ways that are not fully in my control and clearly predictable?11
I think we can answer yes, and though this talk has not provided a robust enough
explanation, it has pointed to numerous of the areas that make this type of
picture an essential one. This sort of conception of the self facilitates both
critique and creativity while giving necessary address to the vulnerability and
risk involved in engaging with our selves and our social relations in freer forms
of expressions, not based on homogenous social norms. Autonomy, and the
agency that expresses it, is a process of individuation, though one also
inherently limited by community. Agency both works through and, in its
creativity, apart from normalizing social norms; as such, in the right hands, it
can transform them.

11
Vulnerability, 27.