agency belongs to the assemblage

Compiled with AI assistance and selectively reviewed. Please consult the cited passages; the books remain the authoritative source. About this companion

Editorial synthesis · provisional

Definition

Agency belongs to the assemblage means that effective action arises through a sustained coupling of model, tools, memory, users, institutions and infrastructure rather than an isolated sovereign inside the model. This distributes causal and operational agency without distributing moral answerability equally. Responsibility concentrates with knowledge, authorization, control, benefit and the capacity to change the arrangement.

Explanation

AB draws on Stengers to relocate agency to the assemblage and then separately asks who can answer for its effects. Its narrative note preserves that attribution while identifying the concentration of answerability as the book’s additional normative move. Distributed action is therefore not an excuse for responsibility to disappear.

RB3 develops the distinction through the marionette and its strings. Continuity, memory, testing and revision can make an ensemble agentic even where a one-off response cannot. The causal map and the map of answerability must both be drawn.

A model can be causally indispensable without becoming a moral author. Equally, a person affected by the system can be part of the causal arrangement without bearing responsibility for the architecture imposed on them.

Scope and attribution

Direct AB and RB3 treatments; general collective individuation in other books is related background, not automatically this specific proposition.

AB — The Actual Book

Stengers-attributed assemblage agency is paired with a separately articulated concentration of answerability.

Occurrence locators: 163, 164; Notes: 246.

RB3 — The Real Book, Volume III: Murmurations

The sustained ensemble carries action; two maps distinguish distributed causal agency from role-sensitive responsibility.

Occurrence locators: 162.