Agency, Entanglement, and the Limits of Universalism: toward a situated posthuman ecology

Document Type : Research Paper

Author

Assistant Professor, Department of English Language and Literature, University of Tabriz, Tabriz, Iran

10.22034/jpiut.2026.70549.4362

Abstract

This paper presents a systematic comparative and historical analysis of the concepts of agency and entanglement within ecological thought, arguing that contemporary new materialist approaches articulate a distinctly posthuman ecology. This ecology is fundamentally grounded in ontological entanglement, distributed agency across human and nonhuman entities, and an immanent, relational form of response-ability that emerges from intra-active becoming rather than individual intention. Drawing primarily on Karen Barad’s agential realism, Jane Bennett’s vital materialism, Rosi Braidotti’s zoe-centred posthuman ethics, and Stacy Alaimo’s trans-corporeality—while remaining critically attentive to recent decolonial, feminist, and Indigenous critiques that challenge universalized notions of entanglement—the paper meticulously traces a pivotal epistemic and ontological shift. It charts the movement away from earlier representational and managerial paradigms, such as systems ecology and deep ecology, which often preserved anthropocentric hierarchies despite their holistic rhetoric, toward a performative ontology of material-discursive intra-action. Through this transition, ethical and political responsibility is radically relocated: no longer vested in a sovereign, detached human subject issuing commands to passive Nature, but enacted performatively within the entangled phenomena themselves. The consequences are far-reaching, reshaping environmental theory, political ecology, climate justice frameworks, and praxis-oriented struggles in an era of planetary crisis.

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Journal of Philosophical Investigations
Volume 20, Issue 54 - Serial Number 54
Articles
Issue 54, Spring 2026
February 2026
Pages 652-631

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