Series: Construal and the Collective – Part 5
Introduction: From Pattern to Action
In the previous post, we reframed individuation not as a property of isolated individuals, but as a perspectival differentiation within the symbolic phasing of the collective. But individuation alone does not account for agency.
To be individuated is to be patterned. To be agentive is to repattern — to initiate symbolic shifts that alter the phasing of collective construal. This post explores how agency arises within a relational ontology, and how it operates not through will or force, but through symbolic rephasing.
1. Agency Without Autonomy
The modern myth of agency is steeped in autonomy — the sovereign subject who acts freely against or upon the world. But in a relational ontology, there is no subject outside relation, and no world outside construal.
Agency is not autonomy. It is the capacity to rephase construal within a symbolic system.
In other words, the agent is not one who stands apart from the system, but one who can shift its trajectory from within — by reframing meanings, realigning roles, and opening new patterns of collective sense.
This reframing does not require a subject with special powers. It requires a positioned perspective, reflexively attuned to the phase-relations of meaning in play.
2. Conditions for Symbolic Agency
Symbolic agency is not evenly distributed. It emerges where three enabling conditions intersect:
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Reflexive perspective: the capacity to perceive construals as construals — to see meanings as made
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Differentiated individuation: a patterned position within the field that allows access to particular symbolic leverage
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Collective responsiveness: a symbolic field open to alignment, tension, or reconfiguration
The agent, then, is not a self-contained doer. The agent is a phase-sensitive inflection point — a locus from which the symbolic field itself becomes transformable.
3. Three Modes of Symbolic Agency
We can distinguish at least three broad forms of symbolic agency, each involving a different mode of rephasing the collective:
a. Amplificatory Agency
This mode strengthens or clarifies existing phasings — reaffirming, resonating with, or intensifying current symbolic alignments. Examples:
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A teacher articulating shared values with new clarity
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An artist whose work powerfully amplifies a collective mood
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A ritual that consolidates symbolic roles through repetition
Amplificatory agency does not invent. It concentrates and revalidates.
It is often stabilising, even conservative — but essential to the durability of collective construals.
b. Transpositional Agency
This mode shifts existing construals into new symbolic keys — preserving some pattern while altering its frame. Examples:
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Reclaiming a slur as a badge of honour
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Parodying a dominant genre to reveal its assumptions
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Translating a moral code into a political register
Transpositional agency rekeys the symbolic system — neither breaking it nor leaving it untouched.
This mode often destabilises roles and opens up latent meanings.
c. Generative Agency
This mode initiates new symbolic distinctions — introducing novel construals that reconfigure the collective phase-space. Examples:
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Coining a new genre of sociality or relation
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Enacting a way of being that was previously illegible
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Crystallising a new alignment of value and meaning
Generative agency opens new cuts in the symbolic field — enabling the emergence of unprecedented formations.
This mode is rare, but transformative. It alters not only how the collective construes, but what can be construed at all.
4. Agency as Collective Phase-Sensitivity
Even the most singular agentive act is never purely individual. It depends on:
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Pre-existing symbolic potentials
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Collective uptake or resistance
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Recirculation and sedimentation
In this sense, agency is always collectively mediated. It is not a property of the individual, but a phenomenon of relational responsiveness.
To act is to rephase. To rephase is to participate in the ongoing construal of collective meaning.
Symbolic agency, then, is not a heroic disruption. It is an attunement to the phase-space of the social — and a willingness to act within that field to shift its paths.
5. The Ethics of Rephasing
If agency is rephasing, then the ethical question becomes: How shall we shift the symbolic field? Not whether we can act freely, but how we choose to modulate the shared space of meaning.
This calls for:
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Reflexive awareness of our symbolic positioning
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Care in how we realign collective construals
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Responsiveness to the phase-trajectories we co-create
The agent is not the hero. The agent is the modulator — one who bears responsibility for the symbolic trajectories they rephase into being.
Conclusion: Toward a Reflexive Politics of Meaning
Agency, in a relational ontology, is not the freedom to do whatever one pleases. It is the capacity to reshape the very horizons of meaning that structure possibility. To become agentive is to take part — knowingly, carefully — in the phasing of the collective.
In the next post, we will explore how these symbolic phase-shifts sediment over time, giving rise to social memory, institutional form, and the recursive architectures of culture itself.
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