Autonomy

Abstract

chapter 4 AUTONOMY Forming an identity implies the ability to do so. In more profound terms: self-definition, of the kind discussed throughout this monograph, is predicated upon individuals' relative autonomy and agency, their capacity to effect changes in their own lives and in the world around them, to act in accordance with their own wishes, to avoid undue social, bodily, or moral constraints imposed from outside. The obverse also holds, because compromised autonomy is typically accompanied by a disruption or diminution of personal identity, with the oppressed individual becoming, at worst, an object, a vessel, an instrument.Autonomy constitutes a, if not the, major distinction between the categories of 'character' and 'person', because fictional beings claim no real capacity for self-determination, no matter how full or dominant their personalities may seem. Characters are trapped within texts, at the mercy of authors and readers alike, and have no contingent futures on which to exercise their powers of choicethey have no powers of choice. Instrumentality, object-status, is their inescapable fate, a point brought home all the more forcefully in Senecan tragedy where dramatis personae openly acknowledge their positions within pre-existing and concurrent literary traditions, their identities predicated not just on authorial invention, but also on the demands of genre and of prior poetic models. Against such a background, their notorious tendency for self-assertion may seem a pitiful mirage. However often Medea affirms herself as Medea, or Hercules as Hercules, they remain unable to alter themselves or their circumstances. The desire of so many Senecan protagonists to push forward and dare the undareable, do the impossible, acts as a foil to the agency they do not ultimately possess. They may rant as much as they wish: it won't change anything.