agentic orientation as magical voluntarism

Communication Theory ISSN 1050-3293

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Agentic Orientation as Magical Voluntarism

Joshua Gunn & Dana L. Cloud

Department of Communication, University of Texas at Austin, One University Station, Mailcode A1105, Austin,TX 78712

In this essay we argue that the rhetoric of Foss, Waters, and Armada’s recent work on ‘‘agenticorientation,’’ as well as the rhetoric of the popular bestselling DVD and book The Secret,are typical of ‘‘magical voluntarism.’’ Magical voluntarism is an idealist understanding ofhuman agency in which a subject can fulfill her needs and desires by simple wish-fulfillmentand the manipulation of symbols, irrelevant of structural constraint or material limitation.Embracing magical voluntarism, we argue, leads to narcissistic complacency, regressiveinfantilism, and elitist arrogance. A more materialist and dialectical understanding ofagency is better.

doi:10.1111/j.1468-2885.2009.01349.x

Magick is the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity withWill.

—Aleister Crowley (1991, p. 27)

By its regression to magic under late capitalism, thought is assimilated to latecapitalist forms.

—Theodor Adorno (1994, p. 129).

Over a decade ago anthropologists Jean and John L. Comaroff (1999) advancedthe provocative thesis that globalization in late capitalism has led to ‘‘a dramaticintensification . . . of appeals to enchantment,’’ often most discernable in indus-trializing countries such as South Africa (p. 282). From ‘‘get rich quick’’ pyramidschemes to e-mail promises from millionaire widows in Nigeria, ‘‘capitalism has aneffervescent new spirit—a magical, neo-Protestant zeitgeist —welling up close to itscore’’ (p. 281). Of course, over a half-century ago Theodor Adorno (1994) inveighedagainst astrology and soothsaying as indices of economic magic, underscoring theability of capitalism to promote the ‘‘doctrine of the existence of spirit’’ so centralto bourgeois consciousness. ‘‘In the concept of mind-in-itself,’’ argued Adorno,‘‘consciousness has ontologically justified and perpetuated privilege by making it

Corresponding author: Joshua Gunn; e-mail: [email protected]

50 Communication Theory 20 (2010) 50–78 © 2010 International Communication Association

J. Gunn & D.L. Cloud Agentic Orientation as Magical Voluntarism

independent of the social principle by which it is constituted. Such ideology explodesin occultism: It is Idealism come full circle’’ (p. 133). What the Comaroffs point to isnot the arrival of a new form of magical thinking, then, but the intensification andproliferation of postenlightenment gullibility via globalization—ironically in what ispresumably the age of cynical reason (e.g., Sloterdijk, 1987).

As human beings, academics are just as susceptible to magical thinking andnarcissistic fantasies of omnipotence as everyone else. Perhaps because at somelevel of communication scholars tend to entertain a sense of the magical in theidea of communication (see Peters, 1999), we have been particularly prone to aphilosophical belief in what we term ‘‘magical voluntarism,’’ the notion that humanagency is better understood as the ability to control a given phenomenon throughthe proper manipulation of thoughts and symbols (e.g., language). Going wellbeyond the straightforward idea that our thoughts necessarily influence our actionsin transforming the world around us, what we are calling magical voluntarism fostersa deliberate misrecognition of material recalcitrance, an inability to recognize thestructural, political, economic, cultural, and psychical limits of an individual’s abilityto act in her own interests. Furthermore, magical voluntarism refuses to acknowledgethat there is a limit to the efficacy of symbolic action, beyond which persuasion andthought alone fail to shift existing social relations.

In popular culture, magical voluntarism is typified by the bestselling book andDVD The Secret (Byrne, 2006; Heriot, 2006), which teach the reader/viewer that‘‘[y]our life right now is a reflection of your thoughts. That includes all great things,and all the things you consider not so great. Since you attract to you what you thinkabout most, it is easy to see what your dominant thoughts have been on every subjectof your life, because that is what you experienced’’ (Byrne, 2006, p. 9). The ‘‘magical,neo-Protestant zeitgeist’’ typified by the raging success of The Secret (see McGee,2007) indicates that enchantment is not limited to developing countries, but is also acrowning achievement of late capitalism in the postindustrial world.

Nor is magical thinking limited to popular culture. As a recent essay in this journalby Sonja K. Foss, William J. Waters, and Bernard J. Armada (2007) demonstrates,magical thinking has some purchase in the field of communication studies (see alsoGeisler, 2005; Villadsen, 2008).1 According to Foss, Waters, and Armada, humanagency is simply a matter of consciously choosing among differing interpretations ofreality. We argue that the understanding of agency advanced by Foss, Waters, andArmada is informed by the same voluntarist ideology that has enchanted The Secret’smillions of readers.

Below we advance a conception of agency as an open question in order to combatmagical thinking in contemporary communication theory. Although we approachthe concept of agency from different theoretical standpoints (one of us from theperspective of psychoanalysis, the other, classical Marxism), we are mutually opposedto the (bourgeois) idealism of magical voluntarism in recent work in communicationand rhetorical studies on agency.2 Our primary vehicle of argument is a critiqueof Foss, Waters, and Armada’s essay, ‘‘Toward a Theory of Agentic Orientation:

Communication Theory 20 (2010) 50–78 © 2010 International Communication Association 51

Agentic Orientation as Magical Voluntarism J. Gunn & D.L. Cloud

Rhetoric and Agency in Run Lola Run,’’ which represents a magical-voluntaristicbrand of practical reason (phronesis) that is increasingly discredited among a numberrhetorical scholars. We are particularly alarmed by the suggestion that even in‘‘situations’’ such as ‘‘imprisonment or genocide . . . agents have choices about howto perceive their conditions and their agency . . . [which] opens up opportunities forinnovating . . . in ways unavailable to those who construct themselves as victims’’(p. 33). The idea that one can choose an ‘‘agentic orientation’’ regardless of contextand despite material limitation not only ignores two decades of research within thefield of communication studies on agency and its limitations (and is thus ‘‘regressive’’in more than one sense), but tacitly promotes a belief in wish-fulfillment throughvisualization and the imagination, as well as a commitment to radical individualismand autonomy. As a consequence, embracing magical voluntarism leads to narcissisticcomplacency, regressive infantilism, and elitist arrogance.

In what follows we first briefly survey the field’s literature on agency andcontextualize Foss, Waters, and Armada’s essay in respect to recent discussions amongrhetorical scholars. Their magical voluntarism, we suggest, is better understood as afacile response to the challenge posed to communication scholars by the posthumanistturn in the theoretical humanities. Then, after briefly summarizing Foss, Waters, andArmada’s argument, we advance alternative readings of their primary exemplar, RunLola Run. Rather than Run Lola Run, we argue that Byrne’s bestselling The Secretis a better illustration of their theory. We conclude by urging a renewed attentionto an older, more durable, thoroughly disenchanted approach to the question ofagency: dialectics.

I. Agency in Rhetorical Studies

[Let] me say that reports of the death of the author are greatly exaggerated. . . .

[R]hetors/authors, because they are linked to cultures and collectivities, mustnegotiate among institutional powers and are best described as ‘‘points ofarticulation’’ rather than originators.

—Karlyn Kohrs Campbell (2005, p. 5)

Rhetoric’s ‘‘Agency Crisis’’Foss, Waters, and Armada frame their essay on ‘‘agentic orientation’’ as an answerto John Lucaites’ call for identifying ‘‘the wide range of options by which agency . . .

is constituted in particular rhetorical performances,’’ which they interpret as acartographic project that can lead to a better understanding of the choices availableto people ‘‘in the rhetorical process’’ (2007, p. 3).

Their attention to Lucaites’ call for a multiplicity of standpoint-oriented analyses,however, fails to acknowledge the overriding concerns of 41 scholars who alsoparticipated in the discussions on agency at the 2003 meeting of rhetoricians inEvanston, Illinois, under the aegis of the Alliance of Rhetoric Societies (ARS).This inattention to the broader conversation in the discipline about agency (see



also Biesecker 1992b, Cloud, 2006a) leads them to elide the crucial exigency for thecontemporary critical and theoretical investments underpinning current scholarshipon (rhetorical) agency. ‘‘Since agency has traditionally been understood as propertyof an agent, the decentering of the subject—the death of the author/agent—signalsa crisis for agency,’’ suggests Carolyn R. Miller (2007, p. 143). And as Cheryl Geislernotes, a strong preoccupation with postmodern and poststructural theory amongARS participants was in reaction to this perceived crisis:

Most scholars at the ARS acknowledged, explicitly or implicitly, that recentconcern with the question of rhetorical agency arises from the postmoderncritique of the autonomous agent. As articulated by Gaonkar more than a decadeago, this critique faults traditional rhetoric for an ‘‘ideology of agency,’’ viewing‘‘the speaker as origin rather than articulation, strategy as intentional, discourseas constitutive of character and community, ends that bind in commonpurpose.’’ (2005, p. 10; also see Gaonkar, 1997 [1993])

Although it would be better to say that discussions of agency at the ARS meeting werein response to the posthumanist turn in the theoretical humanities and not ‘‘post-modernism’’ (Gunn, 2006; Lundberg and Gunn, 2005), the interest in understandingagency today directly descends from the challenges posed to the self-transparent, fullyconscious agent by numerous philosophers and theorists in the last two centuries(e.g., Adorno, Althusser, Baudrillard; Butler; Derrida; Foucault, Freud; Heidegger;Lacan; Marx; Nietzsche; and so on). For example, Sigmund Freud and numerouspsychoanalytic thinkers have been telling us for more than a century that our choicesare never fully conscious and often motivated by unconscious desires. Karl Marxand numerous materialist thinkers have also been telling us for more than a centurythat polarized class positions, exploitative economic relations, and their ideologicaljustifications cause us to invest—of necessity and of desire—in our own exploitationand unhappiness. Such contemporary theorists as Judith Butler and Fredric Jamesonhave illuminated the material and ideological limits to any conception of entirelywillful, individual agency (Butler, 1990; Butler, 1993, Jameson, 1991). The critique ofhumanism calls into question any easy assumption of individual conscious agency.Thus, in a field founded on the possibility of strategic political intervention into exist-ing social relations, the critique of humanism constitutes a crisis that is particularlypoignant to us. Responses to this crisis have been diverse.

The Posthumanist TurnOne way scholars have addressed the crisis of rhetorical agency is by embracing theposthumanist turn. ‘‘Posthumanism’’ is simply shorthand for the critique of the self-transparent, autonomous subject that is sometimes said to begin with Heidegger’scritique of humanism (Davis, 2000, pp. 21–68; Gunn, 2006). Posthumanism is oftenerroneously equated with ‘‘postmodernism’’ and ‘‘poststructuralism,’’ although thelatter share an investment in the former. There are many different posthumanist



theories; what they all share, however, is a decentering of the all-powerful, choice-driven, radically free subject and an attention to larger structural, material, ordiscursive objects that limit and/or constitute the subject. The work of MichelFoucault (1990) is paradigmatic in this regard, detailing the ways in which theproduction of the subject who believes s/he is a willful agent is the primary operationof power:

Power relations are both intentional and nonsubjective. If in fact they areintelligible, this is not because they are the effect of another instance that‘explains’ them, but rather because they are imbued, through and through, withcalculation: There is no power that is exercised without a series of aims andobjectives. But this does not mean that it results from the choice or decision ofan individual subject. . .There is no single locus of great Refusal. . . . Instead thereis a plurality of resistances . . . by definition they can only exist in the strategicfield of power relations. (pp. 94–96)

Foucault’s posthumanism, following that of structuralist Marxist Louis Althusser,focused attention in critical communication studies on the production of ‘‘subjectiv-ity’’ and/or ‘‘ideology’’ (see Cloud, 2006a; Gunn & Treat, 2006). This emphasis helpsto resituate agency as a capacity—and not only a human capacity—for action thatis both constrained and enabled by structures, contexts, and so on (e.g., Lacan, 2006,pp. 6–48). In rhetorical studies, Barbara Biesecker’s work has been instrumental inpromoting posthumanist stances toward agency. In her widely read essay on thework of Foucault, the crisis of agency is recast in terms of the question of resistance:‘‘Critical rhetoricians and their discourses do not set practices of resistance intomotion but, rather, are themselves set into motion by those practices’’ (1992b, p. 361;see also Gaonkar, 1997).

The posthumanist reversal of the locus of agency from the individual to theexterior (e.g., discourse, technique, and so on) is also reflected in Bisecker’s critiqueof the work of Karlyn Kohrs Campbell and others, whose focus on the rhetoric ofdiscrete, individual women, argues Biesecker, unwittingly rehabilitates the figure ofthe autonomous agent. Ironically, Biesecker argues, the figure of the autonomousagent is fundamentally phallogocentric and essentialist (Biesecker, 1992a; Biesecker,1993; also see Campbell, 1993; contra Campbell, 2005). In a similar vein, arguing thatthe crisis of agency is wrongly saddled with the normative goal of political effectivity,Ronald Walter Greene has argued for recasting rhetorical agency as ‘‘a form of livinglabor’’ that frees theorists from the task of specifying its precise ontological locus inan individual person (2004, p. 2). Related posthumanist conceptions of rhetoricalagency abound: Christian Lundberg and Joshua Gunn have critiqued discussionsof agency that formulate the concept as a power or substance which can be ownedor possessed. Instead, they advance a ‘‘negative theology of the subject’’ that wouldresist any final statement on what agency is or how it is manifest—an ethical anddispositional orientation instead of an epistemic or ontological one (2004, p. 102).Kendall R. Phillips’ recent work develops the notion of a ‘‘rhetorical maneuver’’



to help specify a mode of agency that can contend with the complexities of a subjectof multiplicity in relation to the ‘‘constraining nature of the subject position,’’material limitation, ideological subjectification, and so on (Phillips, 2006). Drawingon the work of Michel Meyer, who ‘‘reformulates the foundational and the humanin terms of questioning,’’ Nick Turnbull has argued for a ‘‘rhetorical anthropology’’that locates a capacity for action in the cognitive act of questioning as such (Turnbull,2004, p. 221). Our gloss of these theorists’ work, of course, does not exhaust theposthumanist work being done on rhetorical agency, but it is suggestive, nevertheless,of a strong, decades-long investment in theorizing a posthumanist understandingof rhetorical agency (also see Crowley, 1992; Charland, 1987; Davis, 2000; Wander,1984; Wander, 1995).

Dialectical AgencyThe posthumanist turn in the humanities more broadly and in CommunicationStudies more specifically has been challenged by theorists and critics with explicitpolitical projects. In an influential and widely anthologized essay, feminist scholarLinda Alcoff (1988) has noted the ‘‘identity crisis’’ posed by posthumanism tofeminist theory: ‘‘The self-contained, authentic subject conceived by humanism tobe discoverable below a veneer of cultural and ideological overlay is in reality aconstruct of that very humanist discourse’’ (p. 415). Along with Alcoff, we recognizethe crucial import of having troubled naıve humanism, a theoretical turn that makescritique of the constitution of subjectivity possible. Even so, we share Alcoff’s worrythat taken too far, posthumanist theory ‘‘[denies] not only the efficacy but . . . eventhe existence of intentionality’’ (p. 416).

Alcoff suggests that we must understand ‘‘individual intentions as constructedwithin a social reality,’’ while also recognizing ‘‘the subject’s ability to reflect on socialdiscourse and challenge its determinations’’ (p. 417). This perspective characterizesthe second general approach to the crisis of agency, the dialectical. Dialecticsrepresents an attempt to reckon with the challenges of posthumanism while notabandoning, entirely, various components of the humanist tradition: Agency is to besituated somewhere between subject and structure, a meeting place of interiors andexteriors. This understanding of rhetorical agency is perhaps the most popular andsatisfying one among rhetorical scholars. Karlyn Kohrs Campbell’s (2005) widely readand award-winning keynote address at the ARS conference, ‘‘Agency: Promiscuousand Protean,’’ summarizes the dialectical position well:

In a nutshell, I propose that agency (1) is communal and participatory, hence,both constituted and constrained by externals that are material andsymbolic; (2) is ‘‘invented’’ by authors who are points of articulation;(3) emerges in artistry and craft; (4) is effected through form; and (5) is perverse,that is, inherently protean, ambiguous, open to reversal. (p. 2)

Notably, Campbell’s statement on the status of agency does not attempt to reversethe posthumanist turn, but rather, sets out to reconcile the theoretical perspectives



of Judith Butler and Michelle Balif with close textual reading practices that, until thecrisis of agency, were assumed to have singular, self-transparent authors. Similarly,John Lucaites’ call to jettison agency as a concept and locate power, instead, inhistorically particular rhetorical performances ‘‘in relationship to a set of perceivedor constituted tensions . . . between cultural, institutional, and technological normsand structures’’ is a theoretical compromise: Agency is best understood on a case-by-case basis, leading to a multiplicity of conceptions of agency (Lucaites, 2003,paras. 1–2). Carolyn R. Miller’s (2007) recharacterization of agency as an attributionthat makes certain kinds of symbolic action possible also figures a subject’s actionsbetween the constraints of an exterior and the motives of an interior.

The most widely known, explicitly dialectical positions on agency in rhetoricalstudies, however, are those of James Arnt Aune, Dana Cloud, and other Marxistcritics. For example, critical of certain posthumanist theories of agency (namely,those of Greene 1998; 2004; 2007), Cloud, Macek, & Aune (2006) argue that socialgroups, especially class-based groups, harbor a capacity for political action groundedin their material circumstances:

Either workers and their allies claim the real agency of that they possess and takethe chance of making a world in which they are free in body as well as mind; orthey resign themselves to generation after generation of grinding exploitation,settling for the meaningful but insufficient consolations of sporadic, creative,ungrounded, and symbolic resistance. (2006, p. 81)

Cloud, Macek, & Aune (2006) argue not only that ordinary people must mobilizecollectively in order to pressure or overthrow employers and institutions, but alsothat it is the intersection of consciousness and experience that is generative of agency.In other words, as Cloud (2005) explains, working class agency is a product of boththe experience of embodied labor and explicit political intervention and collectiveorganizing. Agency in this view is not primarily characteristic of individuals; rather,the working class is a particular kind of collective agent that can manifest a realchallenge to the capitalist system. In contrast, to believe that one can individuallyeffect political change, or worse, to believe that one is powerless to effect politicalchange, is to succumb to oppressive structures, economic and otherwise. Again,agency is located in the tensions between a larger structure and the (collective)subject (also see Jameson, 1977).

Retreat to HumanismFinally, the third way that scholars have responded to the crisis of agency is by simplyavoiding it. Avoidance is typically pursued by recourse to pragmatic or rehabilitativehumanism, both of which amplify classical notions of voluntarism in the name of ‘‘tra-dition.’’ Recourse to pedagogical ends is a frequent pragmatic argument that is made toside-step the challenge of posthumanism (e.g. Geisler, 2005). For example, respondingto Lundberg and Gunn’s argument for a negative theology of the subject, Lisa StromVilladsen complains that their conception is pedagogically inaccessible (2008, p. 29).



The more troubling counterpart to the pragmatic retreat, however, is the kind ofrehabilitative humanism that asserts agency involves a self-conscious, self-transparentsubject who is condemned to make choices, and in so doing, directs the course of herlife entirely by will alone: magical voluntarism. In light of the posthumanist critique,as well as the negotiation with the project of the ‘‘posts’’ represented in the dialecticalposition, a return to any radical form of voluntarism is purely nostalgic for an agentwho never was. Yet this is the position that Foss, Waters, and Armada curiouslyadvocate, and to which we now turn.

II. Run Lola Run: The Power of Positive Thinking?

. . . the subject as a self-identical entity is no more.

—Judith Butler (1993, p. 230)

So far we have considered three basic positions in relation to the crisis of agencyamong rhetorical scholars: the posthumanist embrace, the dialectical negotiation, andavoidance via the pragmatic or rehabilitative humanist retreat. By failing to engageposthumanism3 —indeed any work that challenges their theory—Foss, Waters, andArmada advance an under-researched theory of agency that some readers of thejournal Communication Theory may mistake as representative of rhetorical studies.Although we subscribe to different positions on agency ourselves (one of us isskeptical of posthumanism, while the other is more critical of humanism), it isnevertheless our intent to put an end to the naıve and politically harmful embraceof magical voluntarism in communication studies. Too much labor and thought hasbeen invested in pushing theory forward toward more complex, nuanced, and criticalunderstandings of subjectivity and agency to allow Foss, Waters, and Armada’s theoryto stand uncontested.

Foss, Waters, and Armada presumably advance their theory in response toLucaites’ call for a standpoint-dialectical approach to agency, yet what they end upadvancing is a ‘‘rhetorical mechanism’’ that privileges an individual agent who ‘‘maychoose any agentic orientation and produce any outcome they desire’’ (p. 223). Aftera paragraph-long review of extant literature, they define their project in the followingway:

We want to take the conversation about rhetoric and agency in a somewhatdifferent direction [than reviewed approaches], which is to theorize a rhetoricalmechanism—agentic orientation—that provides various options for theenactment of agency. Agentic orientation is a pattern of interaction thatpredisposes an individual to a particular enactment of agency. Thus, it is notunlike Bordieu’s (1990) ‘‘habitus, systems of durable, transposable dispositions,structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures’’ (p. 10).Although a construct that others have referenced (Emirbayer & Mische, 1998,p. 964), agentic orientation has not been sufficiently developed to constitute apractical option for understanding agency. Our aim in this essay is to explicate



the nature and function of agentic orientation and the options available to agentsthrough its application. (p. 206)

Foss, Waters, and Armada have taken—and distorted—the term ‘‘agentic orienta-tion’’ from a groundbreaking essay in the field of sociology by Mustafa Emirbayerand Ann Mische (1998). In ‘‘What is Agency?’’ Emirbayer and Mische ‘‘begin toreconceptualize human agency as a temporally embedded process of social engage-ment’’ (p. 963) in which ‘‘the formation of projects is always an interactive, culturallyembedded process by which social actors negotiate their paths toward the future’’(p. 984). This conception, Emirbayer and Mische insist, is ‘‘neither radically volun-tarist nor narrowly instrumentalist’’ (p. 984) in a reality that is ‘‘resistant to [the]immediate and effortless realization’’ of one’s projects (p. 998).

Ignoring the complexity of the concept they have appropriated, Foss, Waters, andArmada turn to the German film Run Lola Run and extract a tripartite scheme foranalyzing agentic orientation in terms of ‘‘structure,’’ or the ways in which a subjectinterprets his or her situation; ‘‘act,’’ or the selection of a response to the situation;and ‘‘outcome,’’ which refers to the result of a subject’s interpretation and choice ofaction. Tom Tykwer’s (1999) Run Lola Run is a fast-paced action film about a youngwoman, Lola (played by Franka Potente) and her partner, Manni (played by MoritzBleitreu). The basic plot is simple: After mistakenly losing the money of a gangsterboss, Lola and Manni are forced to come up with 100,000 deutschmarks or Manniwill likely be killed. The film unfolds in three parts, each part representing differentchoices and different results, much like a video game in which one has three ‘‘lives’’to win the game.

After defining agency as ‘‘action that influences or exerts some degree of control’’(p. 7), Foss, Waters, and Armada characterize the three ‘‘runs’’ of the film as thoseof ‘‘victim,’’ ‘‘supplicant,’’ and ‘‘director.’’ In the first run, they argue, Lola adoptsthe persona of victim because she understands her structural situation as controlling(looking to her autocratic father, a banker, for help); her response is self-inflicted pun-ishment (in the film she dies; pp. 209–212). Foss, Waters, and Armada characterizethe second run as a Foucauldian accession to the demands of her situation; Lola thusresorts to ‘‘petitioning’’ the hegemonic structure for help (a peculiar reading giventhat she robs the bank), and again is unsuccessful (Manni dies; pp. 212–215). Finally,analyzing the third run, Foss, Waters, and Armada argue that Lola interprets her struc-tural conditions as possible resources and responds by ‘‘innovating’’ (bypassing thebank, having missed her father, in favor of the casino). Manni and Lola ‘‘use rhetoricto act and direct themselves,’’ they argue, and in ways that often appear extraordinary:

The power that results when individuals engage their worlds as directors isdemonstrated in the third run. . . . Lola has come at last to awareness andadoption of the powerful agency of the director. Lola’s apparent ability tocontrol the roulette wheel in the casino through the unusual act of a scream alsosuggests such power. As she leaves the casino, the bystanders who gather towatch her go are awestruck by her power. . . . they recognize that Lola has freed



herself from the game of chance. Lola’s healing of the security guard in theambulance is another example of her almost magical power. . . . Because thesource of her power is her own interpretation, which is free from the influence,control, or determination of structure, she has unlimited access to innovaterhetorical options. (pp. 218–219)

Never mind that Lola’s encounter with the casino results from pure chance. And, ofcourse, bending the laws of physics and biology is magic, but instead of acknowledgingthis fact, Foss, Waters, and Armada move to characterize and advocate the perspectiveadvanced by Run Lola Run as one that ‘‘is in tune with a tenet acknowledged bya number of diverse perspectives, ranging from social constructionism to quantumphysics. Simply put, it is that symbols create reality’’ (p. 220).

Foss, Waters, and Armada’s reading of the film certainly stands in distinctionfrom other critical readings in a way that severely undermines Run Lola Run as anillustration of their theory of agency. There is a significant literature on Run Lola Run,Tykwer’s work more generally, and its relationships to postfascist, postcommunistGerman culture and politics (see Burns, 1995; Clarke, 2006; Kapczynski, 2008).Understanding the agentic orientation of the film (not only the orientation of thefictional character Lola) requires historical contextualization, which Foss, Waters,and Armada do not undertake. Their rhetorical analysis of an admittedly fantasticalfilm, in which characters exhibit magical ability, treats the film’s characters as if theywere or could possibly be real people in actual situations, concluding that the film’sinternal lessons make up its import. In contrast, most critics and film historians(with the exception of Evans, 2004) are careful to situate the rhetoric of the film as anintervention into sociopolitical space. As such, the film constantly cues the viewer toread it as fantasy, not reality (see Wood, 2006).

For example, O’Sickey (2002) interprets the film as a digitalized and hyperme-diated game that upsets the notion of realism (p. 123). In fact, the film begins as agame refereed by the character of the security guard who calls ‘‘ball up!’’ to signal thebeginning of the film’s action. O’Sickey argues that the Game provides the illusionthat ‘‘we, too, if we work at it, can become the player rather than the played’’(p. 124). Acknowledging that the film’s central question is the possibility of agency,O’Sickey argues that the ‘‘bricolage of realities’’ and the combination of live actionand animation make cause and effect indeterminate, since Lola’s ‘‘supernatural’’abilities are enabled only in a fantasy universe. Mixed media, intercut time sequences,shifts in point of view, and the techno soundtrack ‘‘all work to position viewers toaccept her as an extraordinary being who is able to stop a truck hurtling at high speedtoward her, who can win 100,000 Marks at the roulette table by arresting the wheelon the number 20 by simply screaming, whose piercing look can bring on cardiacarrest, and who is able to save that same man’s life by simply holding his hand’’(p. 126).4 Young audiences in the postgaming environment understand that visualculture does not represent options available in reality. In the end, O’Sickey argues,



Lola actually becomes a ‘‘deflated heroine’’ as Manni (whose very name signals thefeminist politics of the film) reasserts his control (p. 131).

Of course, there are plausible optimistic feminist readings of the film as well. Inthe diegesis, the barriers Lola faces are posed by boys and men: the menacing youthand dog on the stairway who trip up Lola on her second run, the autocratic fatherwhose mistress and work life have displaced concern for Lola, and the dependentand inconsiderate boyfriend who, blissfully unaware of Lola’s panicked sacrifices,greets her after the third run with surprise and nonchalance. It is no wonder at thispoint that Lola, having leapt over the dog, completely missed the encounter withher father, and won her own money, gains a sense of her own capacity to controlher environment. In the end, she holds a bag of honest money and faces a horizonmore open than she had available before (for a resonant reading, see Schubart &Gjelsvik, 2004).

A more pessimistic, existentialist interpretation of the film, however, is even moreplausible and common among critics: The film cultivates awareness that at any givenmoment, a random encounter or nonencounter could alter one’s life forever, withpotentially tragic as well as emancipatory outcomes. In the film’s narrative, secondarycharacters’ futures also hinge on randomly meeting or not meeting Lola. Doris, amother in an abusive relationship, loses custody of her son in one run’s aftermathbut wins the lottery in the next. Mrs. Jager, a bank employee, is occasioned to meether fantasy lover (a teller at the bank) when Lola robs the bank at gunpoint; but whenLola skips the bank in favor of the casino, Mrs. Jager has a serious car accident andcommits suicide rather than live forever as an invalid. A bicyclist likewise ends uphappily married after one run but dead by overdose in a public restroom in another(Lauer, 2003). Significantly, the fate of Lola’s father is in question at the end of herthird run; he never returns to the screen. It could be that by bypassing the bank onthe third run, Lola inadvertently caused her father’s death in the car accident. Thus,Lola’s agency sometimes comes at the expense of that of others, revealing anotherrisk of magical voluntarism: It is blind to the suffering of anyone besides the chosenagent.

From a dialectical perspective, perhaps the most compelling understanding ofthis film comes from Schlipphacke (2006), who argues that Run Lola Run is, likeother Tykwer films, ‘‘a fantasy of escape’’ (p. 109) situated in an aesthetics of globalpostmodernity. ‘‘The Holocaust has, as it were, partly thrust Germany out of theFirst World, so that in the almost 60 years since the fall of Nazism, the country hasexperienced an abrupt re-entry into modernity that occurred synchronically withGerman postmodern ruptures’’ (p. 113). In this context, Tykwer’s films attemptto escape the imaginary wholeness of melodrama, located ‘‘somewhere between therepetition compulsion of historical critique endemic to the New German Cinema andthe ahistorical apathy and traditional aesthetic of the most popular postwar Germanfilm comedies’’ (p. 115). For Schlipphacke, the films offer an ‘‘escape tableau’’: ‘‘Thedialectic of entrapment and escape from family, gender, and history structures eachof Tykwer’s five films’’ (p. 129).



In sum, Run Lola Run is much more complex and ambiguous than Foss, Waters,and Armada’s reading permits one to see. That there is a way to recognize bothstructure and agency—and that Run Lola Run might be an excellent vehicle forunderstanding a more complex agentic orientation—seem to be lost on Foss,Waters, and Armada. Instead, they offer Lola’s magical agency as the solution to themyriad structural crises that Lola faces. Just as they have ignored the extant literatureon agency in rhetorical studies, so too have they ignored both crucial details from thefilm as well as critical readings about it that would complicate and compromise theirreading. Consequently, we propose to reread Foss, Waters, and Armada’s theory ofagency with reference to an object that is better suited as an illustration.

III. The Secret and Magical Voluntarism, or, the Arrogance of WishfulThinking

[M]oral purpose [choice] does not apply to impossibilities; anyone who said hehad a purpose of achieving the impossible would be thought a fool. But there issuch a thing as wishing for the impossible, as, for example, immortality. Again,we may wish for things which could not possibly be won by our own efforts, asfor the victory of a certain athlete. But we cannot purpose [choose] such things;we only purpose what we think we can bring to pass by our won act. . . . For ingeneral our moral purpose seems limited to things that lie within our own power.

—Aristotle (1943, pp. 118–119)

By the end of their reading of Run Lola Run, Foss, Waters, and Armada extract atheory of ‘‘agentic orientation’’ that emerges as both a ‘‘mechanism’’ for rhetoricalcriticism and an ideal toward which people should aspire. As a mechanism, agenticorientation can be discerned in a text/reality by attending to the conscious analysisand choices a given individual (real or fictional) makes in respect to structure,possible actions, and the outcome of the chosen action. As an ideal, however, theauthors suggest the director orientation is ‘‘superior’’ (p. 219) and characterize theideal in the following way: (1) a director understands that structural conditionscan be manipulated such that ‘‘desires are affirmed and supported’’ (p. 215); (2) adirector understands structural conditions as ‘‘resources’’ for ‘‘innovation’’ (p. 215);(3) a director understands structures as social constructions because ‘‘symbols createreality’’ (p. 216; p. 220); (4) a director exhibits ‘‘individual responsibility and inde-pendence’’ or ‘‘self-responsibility’’ such that ‘‘there is no expectation that othersare responsible for meeting [his or her] needs or desires’’ (pp. 215–216); and (5) adirector self-consciously chooses which agentic orientation to adopt (pp. 220–221).For simplicity, we can reduce these characteristics to three interrelated components:(1) wish fulfillment through free choice and will; (2) social constructivism; and(3) radical individualism. The ideal agentic orientation, in other words, is one inwhich an individual, mindful of the symbolic construction of reality, changes realitythrough conscious, willful choices made independently of others.



The Magic of Free WillWhat is striking about Foss, Waters, and Armada’s ideal is its unusual similarity to theway in which ‘‘magic’’ has been defined and characterized in the last two centuries.For example, the most famous and influential magus of modernity, Aleister Crowley,defines magic (or Magick) as ‘‘the Science and Art of causing Change to occur inconformity with Will’’ (1999, p. 27), which overlaps with the wish-fulfilling elementof agentic orientation. Crowley then elaborates a number of ‘‘theorems’’:

1. Every intentional act is a Magical Act. . . .2. Every successful act has conformed to the postulate [that change occurs

through willful force].3. Every failure proves that one or more requirements of the postulate have not

been fulfilled. . . .

4. The first requisite for causing change is through qualitative and quantitativeunderstanding of the conditions. . . .

5. The second requisite of causing any change is the practical ability to set inright in motion the necessary forces. . . .

6. ‘‘Every man and woman is a star.’’ That is to say, every human being isintrinsically an independent individual with his own proper character andproper motion. (pp. 28–29)

We already see all three components of Foss, Waters, and Armada’s ideal agenticorientation reflected in these statements about magic: The magus is an ‘‘independentindividual’’ (a ‘‘star’’ or ‘‘director’’) who changes the world in accord with her will.Unlike Crowley, who recognizes material limitation, however, Foss, Waters, andArmada go so far as to argue that reality is a creation of symbols and consequentlycan be changed by force of will alone (p. 220). Insofar as Foss, Waters, and Armada’stheory of agentic orientation has striking parallels to a number of theories of magic(see Carpenter, 1996; pp. 57–58; Luhrmann, 1989, p. 7), we argue for a better label:‘‘magical voluntarism.’’ Magical voluntarism refers to any theory of agency thatsuggests one can fulfill one’s needs and desires through the independent, willfulmanipulation of symbols irrelevant of structural limitation or constraint.

Today, magical thinking in the United States is no more conspicuous than withRhonda Byrne’s repackaging of the wisdom of Norman Vincent Peale’s The Powerof Positive Thinking (1952/1996). Both a bestselling DVD and a book, The Secretpurports to reveal a centuries-old teaching, dubbed ‘‘the law of attraction,’’ that ‘‘cangive you whatever you want’’ (Byrne, 2006, p. xi). The law of attraction is simplythis: ‘‘Everything that’s coming into your life you are attracting into your life. Andit’s attracted to you by virtue of the images you’re holding in your mind. It’s whatyou’re thinking’’ (p. 4). In the hour-and-a-half DVD and the 200-page book, variousexperts and teachers of ‘‘The Secret’’ explain—in both pseudoscientific and spiritualterms (brought together in the endorsements of two quantum physicists) that the key



to wealth, health, and prosperity is making sure that the mind’s thought frequenciesare appropriately and positively tuned.

The book and video suggest that ‘‘The Secret’’ has been wrongly hoarded by thepowerful few, making what amounts to an appeal to popular power that, ironically,dislocates popular anger and defuses politically necessary antagonism. For example,in the DVD a scene is shown of a number of businessmen in a darkened roomsmoking cigars; in a voice-over the ‘‘philosopher’’ Bob Proctor explains: ‘‘Why doyou think that one percent of the population earns around 96 percent of all the moneythat’s being earned? Do you think that’s an accident? It’s designed that way. Theyunderstand something. They understand The Secret . . .’’ (p. 6). They understand,Proctor continues, that the secret to their success is visualization, that imaging one iswealthy leads one, magically, to wealth. Undoubtedly, The Secret is the most blatantand profitable exemplar of enchantment and magical thinking in our time. Accordingto McGee (2007), ‘‘Byrne’s rate of sales is nearly unrivaled in the annals of self-helpsnake oil.’’ As of May, 2007, The Secret had spent months on bestseller lists worldwideand sold nearly 4 million copies, thanks in part to Oprah Winfrey’s endorsement ofthe book as the explanation for her success (as opposed to the feminist or civil rightsmovements). To illustrate magical voluntarism, then, we now turn to a comparativeanalysis of the three basic components of Foss, Waters, and Armada’s theory and TheSecret, careful to point out what we see as the real world outcomes in each instance.Although it is certainly the case that Foss, Waters, and Armada’s theory of agencyis not identical to that of The Secret, we argue that both are informed by the sameideology of voluntarism. The Secret is simply a more extreme expression of thatideology, and as an extreme, it provides us with a helpful lens with which to seeit operating in Foss, Waters, and Armada’s work. We begin, then, with the mostfoundational component of each theory: constructivist ontology.

Constructivism and the Malleable WorldPresumably drawing on the work of Judith Butler (1993, p. 28),5 Foss, Waters, andArmada argue that orienting oneself as the ‘‘director’’ of one’s life

is in tune with a tenet acknowledged by a number of diverse perspectives, rangingfrom social constructionism to quantum physics. Simply put, it is that symbolscreate reality. . . . Symbolic choices . . . can and do affect the structural world. . . .

Although the reality of everyday life appears prearranged, ordered, and objective,and therefore outside of agents’ sphere of influence . . . the structural world notonly ‘‘bears cultural constructions’’ but is itself a construction. (p. 220)

Because the structural world is itself a construction, individuals are capable ofchanging that world by thinking and making choices about it. Although the authorsacknowledge that ‘‘agents cannot . . . lay out precisely the routes through whichtheir desires will be fulfilled,’’ they nevertheless believe that ‘‘desires are realized inoutcomes that align with agents’ choices’’ because of the ontological status of thestructural world as a construction (p. 220). The key to understanding the ideal of



agentic orientation is full consciousness: In order to change the construction of theworld, one must understand what options are available and put faith in unforeseenpossibilities yet to come (pp. 220–221). Such a position is entirely in keeping withthe ‘‘core concept’’ of magic: ‘‘that mind affects matter, and that . . . the trainedimagination can alter the physical world’’ (Luhrman, p. 7).6

Not surprisingly, Rhonda Byrne also aligns ‘‘The Secret’’ with quantum physics(p. 156); however, constructivism appears in The Secret most conspicuously in theguise of ‘‘the law of attraction,’’ which Bob Doyle, ‘‘author and law of attractionspecialist,’’ defines simply as ‘‘like attracts like’’ at ‘‘a level of thought.’’ Byrneelaborates:

The law of attraction says like attracts like, and so as you think a thought, you arealso attracting like thoughts to you. . . . Your life right now is a reflection of yourpast thoughts. That includes all the great things, and all the things you considernot so great. Since you attract to you what you think about most, it is easy to seewhat your dominant thoughts have been on every subject of your life . . . Untilnow! Now you are learning The Secret, and with this knowledge, you can changeeverything. (pp. 8–9)

Changing everything depends on understanding the ontological primacy of attraction,which is best grasped as a form of magnetism (even though magnetism is, in physics,the attraction of opposites): ‘‘Thoughts are magnetic, and thoughts have a frequency,’’explains Byrne. ‘‘As you think, those thoughts are sent out into the Universe, andthey magnetically attract all like things that are on the same frequency’’ (p. 10).

Nevertheless, as with Foss, Waters, and Armada, Byrne and her army of specialistsinsist on the constructedness of reality and the mutability of structure. ‘‘Time,’’ forexample, is just an illusion:

Einstein told us that. If this is the first time you have heard it, you may find it ahard concept to get your head around. . . . What quantum physicists andEinstein tell us is that everything is happening simultaneously. . . . It takes notime for the Universe to manifest what you want. Any time delay you experienceis due to your delay in getting to the place of believing, knowing, and feeling thatyou already have it. (p. 63)

The concept of temporality is used here to teach readers a certain version ofconstructivism, which is similar to the version Foss, Waters, and Armada advance intheir reading of Run Lola Run: all three runs in the film happen at the same time,but reflect different levels of believing, knowing, and feeling. Once Lola understoodthe mutability of reality and the power of her manipulation of symbols, she couldmagically bend the laws of the Universe for money. Similarly, Byrne writes, ‘‘[i]t’s aseasy to manifest one dollar as it is to manifest one million dollars’’ if you simply havethe right mindset (p. 68).

Although we do not dismiss certain forms of constructivist thought, it is impor-tant to detail the consequence or ‘‘outcome’’ of choosing magical voluntarism. Both



The Secret and Foss, Waters, and Armada invoke physics to argue that structuralchange is possible for anything you desire through conscious thought and choice.Hence, magical voluntarism denies that some material and social conditions are notchangeable:

Agentic orientations . . . are achieved within, rather than simply given by, theconditions of individuals’ lives. Thus, individuals may be in a dominant positionas defined by economic and other structural conditions or in a subordinateposition as defined by a lack of access to such resources, but they may choose anyagentic orientation and produce any outcome they desire. We acknowledge thatsuch a view may be difficult to accept in extreme cases such as imprisonmentor genocide; even in these situations, however, agents have choices about how toperceive their conditions and their agency. Even in these situations, adoption ofthe agentic orientation of director opens up opportunities for innovating in waysunavailable to those who construct themselves as victims. (p. 223, emphasis added)

In other words, the starving prisoner in a concentration camp should choose thedirector orientation and dream-up the possibility of her liberation or escape.7

Aside from the offensiveness of such a perspective on imprisonment and genocide,what is the outcome of adopting this ontological view about ‘‘structural’’ conditions?The Secret is quite clear on the answer: narcissistic complacency. ‘‘Anything we focuson we do create,’’ explains Hale Dwoskin, ‘‘so if we’re really angry, for instance, at a warthat’s going on, or strife or suffering, we’re adding our energy to it’’ (pp. 141–142).So although the rhetoric of magic exemplified by The Secret acknowledges structuralinjustice, it gets explained away in mystical terms that urge the reader to turn her backto the world and seek within. The video and book openly discourage social protest,invoking Carl Jung’s phrase, ‘‘what you resist persists’’ (p. 142). ‘‘Don’t give energyto what you don’t want,’’ intones one of the video’s ‘‘teachers.’’ For example, theDVD segment on wealth begins with black-and-white footage of sweatshop laborersin dreary factories, but sweatshops are a mere blip on the screen. Immediately, thetext explains that today one can be free from such exploitation and drudgery simplyby wishing for money.8 The real world outcome of the constructivism that supportsmagical voluntarism is ultimately selfish inaction. ‘‘You cannot help the world byfocusing on the negative things,’’ says Byrne. ‘‘When I discovered The Secret I madea decision that I would not watch the news or read newspapers anymore, because itdid not make me feel good’’ (pp. 144–145).

Although professional scholars in the United States may be buffered fromsome of the vagaries of economic crisis and barriers to achievement, there are, infact—as opposed to the fantasy of a filmic game or magnetizing your desires intoreality—millions of people around the world who cannot wish away the ‘‘conditions,people, or events external to them’’ (p. 209). Nongovernmental organizations,grassroots banks and crafts projects, and other forms of localized ‘‘self-help’’ can dolittle to curtail the broader abuses of capitalist globalization. But Foss, Waters, andArmada chastise critical postcolonial scholars Radha Hegde and Raka Shome, as if



the (magical) options available to a fictional Lola actually apply to sweatshop workersin India (p. 223). Similarly, The Secret encourages readers to turn on to the law ofattraction and stop resisting injustice: ‘‘The antiwar movement creates more war,’’explains Jack Canfield (quoted in Byrne, p. 142). Shockingly, however, Foss, Waters,and Armada carry their magical voluntarism beyond the fuzzy magnetism of TheSecret to a most extreme conclusion:

Symbolic choices, Run Lola Run argues, can and do affect the structuralworld. We acknowledge that a belief in this tenet is disputable in the presence ofcertain kinds of conditions, but we ask our readers to consider seriously for amoment . . . the possibility that it might be true under all conditions. (p. 220)

Even in the contexts of famine and genocide, Foss, Waters, and Armada believe thatchanging one’s interpretation of events is the correct strategy, especially because‘‘what you resist, persists.’’ While demonstrably different, both their article andThe Secret counsel passivity—implicitly and explicitly respectively—in the face ofthe most brutal exploitation and oppression, letting the purveyors of inequality offthe hook for their actions, urging millions to think positively in the face of theirimmiseration.9

Wish Fulfillment and VisualizationFoss, Waters, and Armada are arguing that a fictional film, Run Lola Run, advancesa tutorial in agency applicable to everyday life. On their account, one’s desires ‘‘arerealized in outcomes that align with agents’ choices, although their manifestationsmay occur in ways not imagined by agents’’ (p. 220). In a way that strongly reflectsthe theory of radical free will advanced by Jean-Paul Sartre in his existentialistphilosophy (Sartre, 1993, pp. 31–62), Foss, Waters, and Armada relentlessly intonethe importance of conscious choice-making rooted in an agency that is purelyinternal to the subject’s imagination: ‘‘An exigence of agentic orientation, in contrast,is something that can be chosen and is under the control of the individual. No one caninterfere with that choice because its location is internal and it can be maintained andreinforced with every decision the individual makes’’ (p. 221). To make their case theauthors read the actions of Lola and other characters in Run Lola Run as if they werereal and their situations were transferable into real people’s circumstances, a modeof interpretation consistent with the valorization of the imagination by practicingmagicians (see Luhrmann, 1989, pp. 328–331).

Not surprisingly, The Secret also stresses the import of choices made in animaginary space:

The reason visualization is so powerful is because as you create pictures in yourmind of seeing yourself with what it is you want, you are generating thoughts andfeelings of having it now. Visualization is simply powerfully focused thought inpictures . . . . When you are visualizing, you are emitting that powerful frequencyout into the Universe. The law of attraction will take hold of that powerful signaland return those pictures back to you, just as you saw them in your mind. (p. 81)



Byrne argues that one is putting ‘‘trust and faith in the Universe’’ by visualizing ina way that reflects Foss, Waters, and Armada’s ideal agentic orientation: ‘‘With adirector orientation, the agent trusts that the orientation will open up possibilities . . .

(p. 220). By visualizing the desired outcome, structural limitation is overcome bychoosing an imagined future. ‘‘Exigence thus becomes not a constraining forcewithin which agents must work,’’ explain Foss, Waters, and Armada, ‘‘but an openingthat enables them to transcend what they previously conceptualized as constraintsand limitations’’ (p. 221). Visualization or imagination thus operates as the keymechanism by which one understands The Secret and adopts the ideal agenticorientation. Magical voluntarism is a conspicuous form of wish fulfillment: I imaginemyself wealthy, and before I know it, I am wealthy!

Notably, Byrne and her associates, as well as Foss, Waters, and Armada, acknowl-edge that their theories of wish-fulfillment concern magical dispositions. Whenattempting to distinguish those who know, understand, and practice The Secret fromthe rest of us, Marci Shimoff explains:

The only difference between people who live in this way, who live in the magic oflife, and those who don’t is that the people who live in the magic of life havehabituated ways of being. They’ve made a habit of using the law of attraction,and magic happens with them wherever they go. Because they remember to useit. They use it all the time, not just as a one-time event. (Byrne, p. 87)

Insofar as Foss, Waters, and Armada describe agentic orientation as a predispositionakin to Bourdieu’s conception of the habitus (p. 206), we are not surprised to findLola described as one of the ‘‘people who live in the magic of life’’:

Lola’s healing of the security guard in the ambulance is another example of heralmost magical power. . . . Because the source of her power is her owninterpretation, which is free from the influence, control, or determination ofstructure, she has unlimited access to innovative rhetorical options. (219)

The ideal agentic orientation, in other words, is a habituated tendency to ‘‘producea virtually infinite array of options that are constrained only by the desires andimaginations of the agents themselves’’ (Foss, Waters, and Armada, p. 222). Byrneargues the ‘‘only reason any person does not have enough money is because they areblocking money from coming to them with their thoughts’’ (p. 99). Presumably, toget the money we want or need, we must visualize beyond structural limitations likeLola does in her third run and hope that our luck does not run out at the casino.

Of course, the visualization of success is important to most endeavors and, asmany readers of this journal will recognize, remains a key lesson in the basic publicspeaking course. Imagination and creativity are very important to developing anddiscerning options and solutions to life’s many problems. Nevertheless, the idea thatone can become wealthy by thinking about money is patently absurd. This fact leadsus to a discussion of the outcome of visualization-magic: a commitment to childishnonsense.



McGee (2007) attributes the success of Byrne’s enterprise not to the gullibility ofthe public but rather to the appeal of the work to people struggling in their daily lives.‘‘Simple desperation renders people susceptible to all manner of false promises,’’ shewrites, adding:

The real secret is that Americans earn less per week than they did in 1972. . .

Americans are feeling the pinch, and the magical thinking that one can simply‘‘ask-believe-receive’’ has a powerful appeal. While subscribing to The Secret’sfantasy of effortless wealth and omnipotence requires that one buy into itsdarker victim-blaming corollaries that seems to be a price millions are willing topay rather than concede that their lives are subject to forces beyond theircontrol. Dire circumstances call for magical solutions. (emphasis added)

From another critical perspective, Adorno would explain the appeal of both The Secretand Foss, Waters, and Armada’s essay as a ‘‘regression of thought,’’ meaning thatbelief in the ‘‘magnetic mind’’ or the visualization of an ‘‘infinite array of options’’in the face of certain death is a classically infantile way of thinking. Usually mostconspicuous in children, magical thinking, explains Martin Burgy, ‘‘is characterizedjust by the nonexistence of a clear dividing line between the ego and the object,’’ thebelief that one’s mental will alone can manifest profound material changes (Burgy,2001, p. 70). Fantasies of telepathy and telekinesis, for example, are rooted in this wayof thinking. Freud would suggest that such beliefs are caused by infantile fantasies ofomnipotence, and thus an adult who entertains the possibility that her brainwaves canalter the social and economic conditions of her immediate environment is—howeverunconsciously—‘‘regressing’’ to a childhood world of make-believe.10 The Secret isthus not only a perfect representative of the contemporary enchantment of capitalism,but an index of popular infantalization in the United States. Foss, Waters, andArmada’s essay is simply an example of how infantile regression is perpetuated inacademic scholarship.

Radical IndividualismFinally, both The Secret and Foss, Waters, and Armada’s versions of magical vol-untarism repeatedly stress a radical individualism in two ways: (a) by insisting theindividual alone has the power to transcend limitation without the help of others; and(b) by insisting that individuals must take full responsibility for their material, social,and cultural existence. ‘‘You are the master of your life,’’ intones Byrne, ‘‘and theUniverse is answering your every command’’ (p. 146). Such juvenile omnipotenceis reflected in the opening remarks of the most recent program on The Secret andthe law of attraction by Oprah Winfrey (2008): ‘‘I am grateful that . . . millions ofpeople, for so many millions of people, the door was at least opened to the idea thatwe are each responsible for the quality of our lives . . . so that people can begin tounderstand that our thoughts . . . are literally creating our experiences.’’ Throughoutthe hour-long program various individuals testify to the transformative power of thelaw of attraction (for example, ‘‘34-year-old Meadow’’ was ‘‘fat, broke,’’ and ‘‘crying



every day’’ until she picked up and read Oprah magazine and saw The Secret DVD).The ‘‘experts’’ on Oprah continuously underscore the centrality of the individual andnecessity for forgiveness and personal responsibility even to the point of ‘‘disappear-ing’’ those who have harmed you through acts of forgiveness. The Secret always comesback to this refrain: ‘‘To love yourself fully, you must focus on a new dimension ofYou. You must focus on the presence inside you’’ (p. 173). In a manner that resemblesAyn Rand’s (1964) defense of the ‘‘virtue of selfishness,’’ Byrne argues that focusingon others is the problem: ‘‘It is not people who are giving you the things you desire.If you hold that false belief, you will experience lack, because you are looking at theoutside world and people as the supply’’ (p. 163). Only by forsaking the world andcentering in oneself can true, positive change begin.

Again, while not as extreme, Foss, Waters, and Armada similarly advocateindividualism and personal responsibility when they stress the ‘‘internal’’ locus ofchoice. As with The Secret and Oprah’s experts, the problem with achieving the idealis a basic misunderstanding about how the Universe truly works:

That everyone has the same capacity for agency, regardless of access to resources,is not to be confused with the notion that everyone chooses well. With theiragency, all individuals may choose situations that make them suffer and reducetheir control over structural conditions. Those who make agentic choices thatappear less desirable gain at least some rewards from such choices—possibly agreater capacity to attract others to a cause, the generation of positive responsesin the form of sympathy or avoidance of responsibility. (p. 224)

Herein we confront the outcome of choosing a radical individualism: elitist arrogance.The elitism of The Secret and Foss, Waters, and Armada’s agentic orientation is

pronounced in their claim that oppression is a matter of perception. For example,Foss, Waters and Armada argue that ‘‘Lola sees herself as helpless and disempowered’’in the first filmic run (p. 209), but when an individual in the real world confronts areal, deadly situation, she might really be helpless and disempowered (e.g., the storiesof child abuse, rape, American slavery, Indian Removal, Hiroshima and Nagasaki,as well as the Holocaust, come to mind). According to Foss, Waters, and Armada,Lola dies in the first run, not because her father is a misogynist, but because ofher ‘‘adoption of the victim orientation’’ (p. 209). ‘‘Because Lola views structuralconditions as controlling, she sees them as limiting’’ (p. 210). Never mind that space,time, and social relations are actually constraints on human action (and more sofor some than for others). Indeed, in both The Secret and the theory of agenticorientation, every act is ‘‘an interpretation of a set of conditions’’ (Foss, Waters, andArmada, p. 207). Oppression is a matter of perception and liberation is an outcomeof wishful thinking. ‘‘Lola also cedes power to structural conditions by refusing totake responsibility for what happens to Manni and her. She places the blame forevents in their lives on conditions, people, or events external to them’’ (p. 209).For practitioners of The Secret, Oprah and her experts, as well as Foss, Waters andArmada, Lola is wholly responsible for her existential condition.11



McGee (2007) calls attention to the conservative consequences of this way ofthinking: ‘‘What about the unfortunate corollary that would necessarily apply to thosewho are ill, impoverished, dispossessed, or worse? What about The Secret’s moreegregious claims . . . that the children of Darfur attracted the starvation their familiesare facing with their wrong thinking.’’ Strangely, this judgment—that women andoppressed others are wrong to blame ‘‘conditions, people, or events external to them’’for the hardships of their lives—resembles the rhetoric of conservative real worldpolicies and agencies, suggesting a common ideological underpinning (see Cloud,1998). Neoliberal structural adjustment programs, in which the World Bank orInternational Monetary Fund ‘‘help’’ suffering populations only if those populationsinterpret their problems as something other than a structured result of global capital-ism, are good examples (see Soederberg, 2006). Some of these programs compel thedesperately hungry to grow luxury crops for export, asking debtor nations to sacrificeinfrastructure—plumbing, waste management, transportation, employment, andsocial services—to the servicing of their debt (see Bond, 2001; Geier, 2000).12

Likewise, now that the U.S. war in Iraq has destroyed (for the second time) thatcountry’s infrastructure and stripped the nation’s resources, creating a crisis thatopened the door to al Qaeda and other insurrectionary groups, the rationale forcontinuing the occupation is that the Iraqis are not taking enough responsibilityfor solving their problems. For example, in January, 2007, Senator and Presidentialcandidate Hillary Clinton (2007) complained during Congressional hearings on theIraq troop ‘‘surge’’ strategy that the hardship faced by the US in Iraq ‘‘has everythingto do with the years of lost opportunities and the failures of the Iraqis to step up andtake responsibility for their own future.’’ Like the starving in less-developed countries,perhaps the beleaguered Iraqis have failed to adopt the proper agentic orientation?When we consider a theory of agency derived from structural antagonisms and globalrealities, instead of from mystical claptrap or Hollywood films, magical voluntarismappears like child’s play.

IV. Concluding Remarks: Whither Dialectics?

Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do notmake it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existingalready given and transmitted from the past.

—Karl Marx (1852/2009)

In this essay we have advanced an extensive critique of Foss, Waters, and Armada’suse of Run Lola Run to justify a theory of agentic orientation. We have argued thatthe book and DVD The Secret are much better suited as an illustration of their theorybecause they help us to see more clearly the voluntaristic ideology informing it. Toa compelling degree, the rhetoric of Foss, Waters, and Armada’s theory and that ofThe Secret are both typical of ‘‘magical voluntarism’’: an idealist understanding ofhuman agency in which a subject can achieve her needs and desires by simple wish



fulfillment and the manipulation of symbols, regardless of structural constraint ormaterial limitation. More specifically, we argued that magical voluntarism featuresthree components: a reliance on constructivism; a belief in wish fulfillment throughvisualization and the imagination; and a commitment to radical individualism andautonomy. In light of these components, it is important to underscore that magicalvoluntarism is not simply a rehabilitation of the rational, self-transparent, andautonomous subject of the Enlightenment; it amplifies the powers of imagination ina manner that is said to transcend material conditions, including the laws of nature.Finally, we have argued that an embrace of magical voluntarism leads to narcissisticcomplacency, regressive infantilism, and elitist arrogance.

Although our primary task in this essay was to advance a critique of the ways inwhich mass culture and scholarship alike have embraced capitalism’s enchantments,we close our essay with an alternative understanding of agency that takes into accountthe rhetorical research of the past two decades. If our critique of Foss, Waters, andArmada achieves anything, we trust it is the realization that scholars cannot simplywish away the problems posed by the project of the ‘‘posts’’ (posthumanism,poststructuralism, postmodernism, and so on) any more than we can wish away thesystematic inequities and structural barriers that prevent millions of people frombeing the ‘‘director’’ of their own lives.

So how might we continue to work through the question of agency? Insofaras the antithesis of our position is magical voluntarism, we are left with twodirections that are not necessarily mutually exclusive: We can continue to thinkthrough agency in terms of posthuman problematics; and/or we can continueworking through the question of agency dialectically. Dialectical thinking is, infact, a third and eminently rhetorical way between happy-go-lucky voluntarism andstructural/economic determinism, and is the meeting place of the present essay’sauthors. Although space prevents a detailed account, we think it is importantnevertheless to conclude with what we see as the most positive and productiveapproach to agency in communication studies.

According to traditional Marxist theory, ordinary people exist in ‘‘circumstancestransmitted from the past’’ (Marx, 1852/2009) that shape their consciousness andconstrain their action, yet collectively—and in spite of ideological and coerciveforces arrayed against them—come to consciousness of their situation, assess theworld around them, and plan and enact change on their own. Materialist dialecticsoffers therefore a critical and political method that describes actual historical changeand affords scholars and activists grounds for political and critical judgment.13 Onthis analysis, class position and the experience of exploitation combine to form anepistemological potential in the dialectical contradiction between the lived experienceof exploitation and the mystifications of ideology (see Cloud, 2006b).

In philosophy, dialectics is most often understood as a form of reasoning towardan understanding of the whole on the basis of the discovery of contradictions. Thissense of the concept of dialectics has its origin in philosophical idealism, such asthat of Plato, whose dialogues enact clash in the rarified realm of ideas, aspiring



to what he regarded as ever-higher truths; and that of Hegel, whose observationthat the self-estrangement produced in relations of unequal power is crucial, butwhose solution to estrangement once again involved transcendence of the sensuous,material, political world.14 Although Marx clearly rejected ‘‘thought against thought’’as a viable resistance strategy, he and Engels were drawn to Hegel’s dialectics as analternative to either static views of society or theories of automatic linear progress.Materialist dialectics describes the ways in which history unfolds, not as a seriesof great ideas or scientific reforms, but rather as a product of contending classes,possessing divergent structural interests. Materialist dialectics insists that dynamismis neither metaphysical nor directed from above according to invisible laws orprinciples. Rather, change unfolds out of contradictions in the existing world.

Although many forms of dialectical thinking have blossomed from Marx’s originalproject (e.g., the ‘‘negative dialectics’’ of Adorno), it is important to underscore theidea that it is a style of thinking and not a ‘‘science.’’ Because dialectics is associatedwith commonplace straw persons of Marxism, it is often misunderstood or hastilydismissed. As Bertell Ollman explains,

The dialectic, as such, explains nothing, proves nothing, predicts nothing, andcauses nothing to happen. Rather, dialectics is a way of thinking that brings intofocus the full range of changes and interactions that occur in the world. As part ofthis, it includes how to organize a reality viewed in this manner for the purposesof study and how to present the results of what one finds to others, most ofwhom do not think dialectically. . . . Dialectics restructures our thinking aboutreality by replacing the common-sense notion of ‘‘thing’’ (as something that hasa history and has external connections to other things) with notions of ‘‘process’’(which contains its history and possible futures) and ‘‘relation’’ (which containsas part of what it is its ties with other relations). (Ollman, 2003, pp. 12–13)

The implications of this view for agency should thus be obvious: Individuals do notexist in isolation, but bear the traces of other individuals, institutions, collective socialrelations, and histories in such a way that to speak of ‘‘agency’’ as something any oneperson possess ignores the interactive dynamic of material and social realty. This isnot to say an individual does not make choices that affect his or her life. Rather, adialectical way of thinking about agency sees an individual only in relation to otherindividuals, social relations, and histories. Consequently, the individual will cannotexist indendent of interactivity, dialogue, and collectivity.

Insofar as the totality is dynamic and constantly changing—the material world,inclusive of our relations to each other, is not inert—perhaps we should not settleon any definitive understanding of what agency is, who has or does not have it, andso on. Perhaps—and in much more in keeping with Lucaites’ call—agency is onlydefinitively sensible in retrospect and with situational specificity. Indeed, understoodas a theory of contingent, situated intervention, a dialectical position resonateseven with traditional rhetorical theory’s understanding of agency as occurring in asimultaneously enabling and constraining situation (see Aristotle, 1991; Bitzer, 1968).



Foss, Waters, and Armada actually advance a theory that is a- or antirhetorical becauseit lacks a sense of contingency or constraint. Alternatively, we are taken with CarolineWilliams’ (2001) suggestion that we should leave the matter of the power and limitsof the individual actor as an open question, which seems to us to be compatible withdialectical thought. Speaking of the concept of the subject in Western philosophy,Williams says:

A significant paradox has been noted to pervade the philosophical study of theconcept of the subject. Not only do our references to the subject seem to assumethe existence of the subject in some form or other, but the repetition of the veryquestion of the subject appears to confirm its structure, a structure whichannounces itself in the form of the question: ‘‘what is the subject?’’ The circle ofreferentiality is quite unavoidable. (2001, pp. 191–192)

That we have similarly studied agency in rhetorical and communication theory in thelast 20 years suggests a similar question. ‘‘What is agency?’’ presupposes that agencyexists, but it does not necessarily isolate it in a discrete human being. How we contendwith agency depends on the particular circumstances and material specificity of agiven event. When we regard the processes of invention and transformation of ourcircumstances as dialectical rather than voluntarist, it occurs that we already have thetools at our disposal to continue working through the question of agency withoutany magic whatsoever.

Notes

1 And we should add the humanities as a whole. In our neighboring Department ofAdvertising, one professor assigns and teaches The Secret not as an exemplar of goodadvertising, but as true philosophy that inspires creativity. As Cloud (2005) has noted,discourse determinism is commonplace across rhetorical, cultural, and criticalorganization studies.

2 For example, following Paolo Virno, Deleuze and Guattari, and Hardt and Negri,Bratich (2008) has argued that the ‘‘immaterial labor’’ of communication scholars is theagency of social change in a capitalism rendered as primarily constituted incommunication (p. 31). By ‘‘communicating otherwise’’ (p. 32) in ‘‘counterresearch,’’communication scholars now have a central role in communicating a new social orderinto existence. In organizational communication studies, Conrad (2004) has calledattention to the perils of discursivist voluntarism there.

3 We should disclose that one of us was an original, blind reviewer for Foss, Waters, andArmada’s essay, and that these criticisms were made in the blind review to the authors.Instead of choosing to address the problem that posthumanism posed for their theory,they simply cut out any discussion of the crisis of agency altogether.

4 The soundtrack to Run Lola Run is a song called ‘‘Believe,’’ in which Lola expresses acontradictory desire for belief in magical agency, wavering from resignation to chance tobelief in fantasy: ‘‘I don’t believe in trouble/I don’t believe in pain/I don’t believe there’snothing left/but running here again/I don’t believe in promise/I don’t believe in



chance/I don’t believe you can resist/the things that make no sense . . ./I don’t believereality would be/the way it should/But I believe in fantasy/the future’s understood/Idon’t believe in history/I don’t believe in truth/I don’t believe that’s destiny/or someoneto accuse/I believe, I believe!!!’’ The music during her third run expresses Lola’s wish(not reality) to be the all-powerful hunter, an almighty ruler, and a writer who coulddetermine her own ending. For us, this mantra-like soundtrack is ironic, as her fatedepends almost exclusively on chance and ‘‘things that make no sense.’’ Even thoughher third run is successful, she still has not become the writer of her own destiny.

5 We also object to the use of Butler’s work in support of Foss, Waters, and Armada’sproject. The full citation that the authors marshal in support of their version of socialconstruction is as follows: The ‘‘presumption of the material irreducibility of sex hasseemed to ground and authorize feminist epistemologies and ethics . . . . In an effort todisplace the terms of this debate, I want to ask how and why ‘materiality’ has become asign of irreducibility, that is, how it is that the materiality of sex is understood as thatwhich only bears cultural constructions and, therefore, cannot be a culturalconstruction?’’ (1993, p. 28). Here Butler is concerned with those who argue that sex isnot a social construction, and more specifically, with why the materiality of sex isunderstood as ‘‘irreducible.’’ Foss, Waters, and Armada, however, suggest Butler equatesthe materiality of the body with the structural world and, further, that she wouldsupport the argument that ‘‘choice is the basic mechanism by which the world ismanifest,’’ a statement to which Butler would vigorously object.

6 Luhrmann is careful to note, however, that change is possible only in ‘‘specialcircumstances, like ritual,’’ a limitation that neither Foss, Waters, and Armada norByrne and her specialists acknowledge (p. 7).

7 To her credit, Oprah has advised cancer patients not to forgo treatment in favor ofpositive thinking (McGee, 2007).

8 Strangely, one of the ‘‘philosophers’’ invoked in the video to support the idea that TheSecret can end exploitation is Henry Ford!

9 Bob Herbert (2008), writing in The New York Times, recently observed that millions ofpeople’s agency is curtailed by the present war in Iraq. He notes, ‘‘for a fraction of thecost of this war we could have put Social Security on a sound footing for the nexthalf-century or more’’; and ‘‘The money spent on the war each day is enough to enrollan additional 58,000 children in Head Start for a year, or make a year of collegeaffordable for 160,000 low-income students through Pell Grants.’’ The needy studentcannot wish tuition into existence. The disabled retiree cannot interpret her povertyanother way to solve her inability to pay for medication. The more than a million deadin Iraq certainly did not have the privilege of ignoring ‘‘conditions, people, or eventsexternal to them.’’ It is nothing short of irresponsible and infuriating to adopt magicalvoluntarism as a serious theory of agency in these contexts.

10 In this respect, the video game logic of Run Lola Run makes sense as a regressive fantasy:What if we were given three lives to change the course of events? ‘‘Do-overs,’’ of course,are the province of childhood—and to our knowledge, there are no do-overs afterdeath. Ironically, a more realistic depiction of juvenile fantasy is Guillermo del Torro’smagically realist Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), in which a young girl, Ophelia, invents acomplex fantasy world to cope with the brutality of fascism. Here we point out simplythat coping with, and agentive control over, circumstances are quite different things.



11 Tellingly, Oprah gushes on her episode on The Secret about having discovered a sterlingbubble blower in her office (a previously unnoticed gift) after telling a guest on the showhow much she would like to blow bubbles. Incredibly, she takes this coincidence asevidence that The Secret works. In a new book on the Oprah phenomenon, Janice Peck(2008) argues that the show’s psycho-spiritual offerings are both an extension of thestrategy of the therapeutic in capitalist society and part and parcel of a hegemonicneoliberal worldview.

12 Economist Joel Geier (2000) explains the role of the IMF: ‘‘IMF loans were granted on‘conditionality.’ That is, the IMF imposed a series of conditions to which the borrowingcountry must adhere in order to receive its funds. . . . IMF loans were only granted tocountries that agreed to accept ‘structural adjustment programs.’ Through theseprograms, the IMF demanded privatization of state-run enterprises. . . . ordered socialwelfare spending reduced . . . [and] demanded that currency be devalued to cut realwages’’ (para. 19).

13 ‘‘Materialist dialectics,’’ as we are using the term, is not aligned with Stalin’s distortedarticulation of ‘‘dialectical materialism’’ or ‘‘dia-mat,’’ which in 1938 interpreted Marxand Engels in such a way as to remove the human agent from the process ofrevolutionary change (see Stalin, 1938).

14 See any of Plato’s dialogues with the Sophists, including Gorgias and Phaedrus(Plato, 1997).

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