A Decolonial View

Human agency means the decision and choice of the individual, that is, the individual chooses a subject or behaviour of his own will, does it, and follows the consequences. Therefore, human agency includes decision-making, selection, action and acceptance of the result. Decisions and choices usually seem to be made by the mind, but in fact many issues have affected the mind of the human selector that eventually the person is faced with a choice. The experiences that human beings face in life, all form our views and beliefs and give us the power to make decisions and choices. So, a person’s choices who lives in a poor family is not the same as a rich person choice. But what if we put these two people in the same choice?

One of the important functions that can be mentioned to consider individual agency is to pay attention to historical events, cultural events and moral events. If we consider wars, can we say that the decisions and choices of individuals are effective in starting and ending wars? Is there a way out for people who are at war? If someone is fighting against the enemy during the war, was it his decision and choice? It seems that fighting against the enemy is a right and logical action. But who is really the enemy? When politicians want to take over a country for economic, political and military interests, they look for rational, cultural, religious and even moral reasons for their defence because they want to justify the soldiers’ minds to take part in the battlefield in their favour. People think that they have made this decision by their own agency. Colonialism happens in exactly the same way. Why some countries are colonized but others are colonizers? Do not colonized people have the power to think, decide and choose? Has a colonizer colonized a country by his own agency? In both cases, there are series of basic information that has given this view to the colonizer and the colony and that basic information has formed both group’s agency.

But as much as the impact of experience on individual agency may seem frustrating, positive functions can also be considered. For example, education is well done in this way. Education can greatly influence people views. Modern education in traditional societies introduces people to new ways of thinking. For example, in the discussion of women’s rights, the best way to acquaint women with their rights is to educate them properly. Unfortunately, even in literate societies, people are oppressed due to lack of sufficient and up-to-date knowledge, and sometimes they themselves accompany this oppression. Therefore, people should pay as much attention to education as they pay attention to the factors influencing their agency to moderate the negative effects of other factors. Finally, we cannot consider absolute agency for individuals, but we can pay attention to the education as an instrument for modifying our mind and resistance.

Fatemeh Shirazizadeh