Tag Archives: agency

Agency/Radical Parasites

Two Models For Talking About Agency

Agency – I’m thinking about the role of agency in migration and diaspora. How much choice is there in the face of dire poverty and hunger? As the effects of global capitalism settle into billions of bodies, is there really a choice to leave?
Other things to consider: How capitalism displaces, drives currents [circuits] of bodies, the role of agency in transnational and transracial adoption.  

Radical parasites – When women use (parasite) men to leave poverty. For example, Ling in The Beautiful Country. She is forced to do sex work, and ends up marrying a white man with money to escape her situation. One way to think about it is loss of agency (again, how much choice is involved when one is living in extreme poverty?), or it could be viewed as radical parasitism. As in, parasiting off of a white American man’s institutionalized privilege and capital to remove oneself from poverty.