Hallward, Peter (2024) Enter the Actor. Symposium: A Quarterly Journal in Modern Literatures, ISSN (print) 0039-7709 (In Press)
Abstract
The concept of the subject is fundamentally equivocal, and its political connotations remain ambiguous. I propose to foreground instead the general category of the actor, in both its theatrical and action-oriented senses. The theatrical register helps remind us of the difference between being and doing, or between a performer and a role; it also serves to foreground the deliberate, trained, prepared, and situated quality of any performance. More importantly, the actor understood as capable of action helps to foreground aspects of agency that the philosophers of Jean-Luc Nancy’s generation tended to downplay or condemn, notably those of intention, purpose and will. If we are actually to confront the enormous problems facing the world we need an adequate account of collective action and thus of collective purpose. Rousseau and Marx help to frame some of the elements of such an account, while Luxemburg, Sartre, and Fanon, among many others, help to clarify some of its contemporary dimensions.
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