Parergon

Abstract:

This afterword to the special issue on ‘Women’s Agency in Early Modern Europe’ takes up the question of agency from a posthumanist perspective, asking not how we can expand or extend the concept of agency beyond the (male) human, but instead whether we as scholars of early modern women might not be in a position to consider ourselves ‘after’ a focus on agency. It explores challenges to the overvaluation of agency, and reviews different ways the articles in the special issue offer challenges to the concept of agency, or methodologies for thinking beyond agency.