God is Change: A Rhetorical Reimagining of Doing Politics

Abstract

This thesis explores a different conception of doing politics in order to bring about a map for social agencies. I first explore Octavia Butler’s works, Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents, to determine how Butler alludes to the possibility of mapping our social agencies in the way she wrote these texts. The reader is made aware of the map of will in the freedoms and dominations the characters abide by as they make decisions about their lives—political or otherwise. Butler’s form shows how a map for social agencies is constructed by understanding our relationship to agency through what I call the “lens of doing.” I use the lens of doing to place the reader in languages and logics of action. Doing is located in places of possibility and places of possible constraint, which is different in form when compared to knowledge. Doing is not necessarily a route to truth, but it is the first step in agency. Then I read Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paolo Freire to learn how he crafts and performs language for agency through doing his politics. Over the years many projects have wrestled with the concept of doing and its form. Lastly, I highlight other authors who have shaped their form for kinds of agency in their own work. This element of doing also points to larger possibilities for academia to map social agencies.