In all the examples we have reviewed, from the subconscious in the case of Freud and Lacan, to the problem of language and the question of hybridity in the case of Bhabha and Spivak, the question of what culture does in practice to people remains. After all, the social aspect comes to the fore straightaway from the moment there are people conducting activities — often called agents in the literature — that focus on the representation of culture as a whole. It is a social game with codes that can only be understood when we know the rules, just as with understanding the rules of football, knowing the traffic laws, or being able to read a musical score. It is all about the interpretation of an act (‘agency’ literally means ‘capacity to act’). And because agency is a key concept within cultural studies, it is important to understand exactly what is meant by it.

In the previous chapters, we dwelled on the question of how to represent the culture of a group when no clear traces of that group remain. Even if a group is not clearly represented in the cultural past, we can still reflect on its presence. This is what the concept of agency is about. It stems from traditional Marxist theory which focused on the issue of where one could find the working class’ capacity for autonomous action in the sources. Given the amount of labour carried out by the working class, there should be at least something of their own identity visible in history. As for workers, it would appear that almost nothing of their everyday lives has been preserved in museums or archives. Occasionally we know how much wages workers earned in the nineteenth century, giving us some insight into their spending power. With a small and seemingly unimportant document as a paycheck, we can gain some insight into the possibilities this group had and didn't have. From buying food to visiting the cinema, being able to pay the doctor to check up your sick daughter, or paying for her wedding ‘with all the trimmings’: it's all culture.

Culture as a Societal Function

As we have seen, agency represents the essence of man as a creature of action. People are subjects of history who actively participate in shaping culture itself.