Pond , Pottering, Potentiality: Action and its Critics

Abstract: This essay considers and critiques the fascination with action without will in contemporary theory. It reads Clare-Louise Bennett's 2015 novel Pond as engaged with the question of what counts as an action, and, specifically, with the idea of "pottering" as a hinge between purposive and nonpurposive behavior. It moves toward a discussion of some curious cases in G. E. M. Anscombe's Intention of action construed as willed but nonintentional, so as to argue against the association of will with sovereignty. Finally, theoretical work like that of Giorgio Agamben is shown to conceive of a more sovereign form of agency by elevating an idealized potentiality over the complexities of will.