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This paper discusses the agency of scientific disciplines and reconstructs it as representative
agency. In the case of disciplinary representative agency, individual and organizational actors are committed to the reflexive interests of a discipline and act on their behalf. This paper explores the essential forms and arenas in which this type of agency is exercised and discusses the relevance of some recent trends in science and higher education for the collective agency of disciplines.

Congress frequently delegates to agencies, and a host of Supreme Court decisions have articulated tests for determining what level of deference courts should give to agency interpretations of their statutory directives. Courts have historically undertaken these analyses in the context of a single agency. Congressional authorization of joint rulemaking authority is more complicated, however, and the traditional frameworks for review are inadequate. When Congress delegates authority to multiple agencies, courts should review the agencies' rules with heightened deference. The traditional framework for judicial review of agency rules is ill equipped when rules are promulgated by multiple coordinated agencies. The prevalence of this type of delegation in recent legislation underscores the need to reconsider the framework under which courts review multiagency rules. For instance, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 ("Dodd-Frank Act") delegates broad authority to multiple agencies to promulgate rules jointly and in consultation with one another. One particularly contentious provision of the Dodd-Frank Act delegates authority to the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve Board, the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Deposit Insurance Company, and the Securities and Exchange Commission to implement the "Volcker Rule" by issuing joint rules. Given the lengthy delays and contentious issues discussed during the notice-and-comment period, the Volcker Rule itself is sure to generate a substantial volume of litigation. The recent issuance of the final rule will likely bring to light unresolved issues in judicial review of multiagency rules.

In this paper, I consider whether an argument for compatibilism about free will and determinism might be developed from the thought that God's agency seems consistent with the rational determination of at least some divine actions by the True and the Good. I attempt to develop such an argument and then consider how to respond to it from the point of view of my own position, which I call Agency Incompatibilism. I argue that a crucial premise in the argument is ambiguous and offer responses to the argument on behalf of the Agency Incompatibilist, on each of the two disambiguations.

Which forms of agency does literature offer to the reader in the twenty-first century? This study investigates migrant lives in contemporary fiction published by young British Asian writers. Examining the protagonists' ideas of ›success‹ in becoming a full member of their society, Jessica Fischer carves out the naturalised model of homo economicus in these texts and in contemporary fiction more generally. She draws attention to the enterprising self as the preferred subject in today's hegemonic discourses and postulates a new conceptualisation of ›agency‹. This book offers an interdisciplinary approach to narratives of transformation. Moreover, it is an urgently needed combination of cultural and postcolonial studies that tackles ethical questions concerning the normative construction of the subject in identity politics.

In support of Frans van Lunteren's project for big-picture history organized around "mediating machines," these comments stress "mediation" as active agency in the world rather than as mere metaphor, on the view that this active agency underlies the potency of technologies as mediators, both between different domains of knowledge and between theories and things. Similarly important for this power is the diversity of the particular constructions that constitute mediators like "balances" or "engines." Diversity of meaning and action gives them their cultural reach, from mechanical contrivance to natural process to political ideology. An interesting question remains about how many mediating machines will suffice for the big picture of modernity over four centuries. Statistics, for example, might be a crucial addition. Another question concerns how to characterize the knowledge regime of a mediating machine. Van Lunteren chooses "information" for the computer. He might also have chosen "complexity," with different import for the character of postmodernity.

Ausgangspunkt meiner Analyse sind die mit der Idee eines Cyberspace nach wie vor verknüpften utopisch wie auch dystopisch überfrachteten Projektionen hinsichtlich ihrer kulturellen und ideologischen Beschaffenheit, des Zeitpunktes ihres Auftretens, ihrer anhaltenden Persistenz, ihrer sozio-symbolischen Funktion sowie ihrer Implikationen für gesellschaftliche Denk- und Wahrnehmungszusammenhänge. Technikdeterministische Vorstellungen eines 'Paradigmenwechsels', die Proklamierung einer technologisch bedingten 'Neudefinition' des Subjekts, die Idee einer Auflösung klassischer Dichotomien und einer Grenzüberschreitung von Raum, Zeit, Materie und Identität stehen in deutlichem Widerspruch zur tatsächlich beobachtbaren Reproduktion nicht nur konventioneller und dichotomer Denkmodelle und Repräsentationsformen, sondern der Idee eines autonomen und technologisch perfektionierbaren Subjekts, die angesichts ihrer zentralen Rolle in aktuellen Mediendiskursen und der Vehemenz, mit der sie zu diesem spezifiaschen historischen Zeitpunkt vertreten wird, einer Erklärung bedarf. Meine Analyse fokussiert auf die Funktion derartiger Technologievisionen bzw. der Idee 'alternativer' virtueller 'Räume' für die Etablierung bestimmter Konzeptionen von 'Gesellschaft' und verweist auf eine für diesen Kontext spezifische Relation von Phantasma und Symptom. Auf der Basis einer Revision des Begriffs sexueller Differenz entwickle ich die Definition eines politischen Subjekts, das nicht einfach als souveräner Akteur oder beliebige Vielfalt zu verstehen ist, sondern sich über einen strukturellen Antagonismus konstituiert, sowie einen Begriff von Handlungsfähigkeit, der die Basis für eine Anfechtbarkeit sozio-kultureller Konstruktionen begründen kann. Meinen Ausführungen lege ich in der Folge einen Begriff von Cyberspace zugrunde, der diesen als sozio-symbolisches Konstrukt definiert, das sowohl technologische Implementierungen wie auch die damit verbundenen Diskurse umfaßt und unausgesetzt neu zu verhandeln ist. Meine transdisziplinäre Herangehensweise im Sinn einer kritischen Repräsentationstheorie verbindet Ansätze strukturaler psychoanalytischer Theorie mit Ansätzen neuerer Hegemonie- bzw. Demokratietheorie sowie der Film- und Medientheorie, der Gender- und der Cultural Studies, um Perspektiven auf aktuelle Medienkonstellationen zu eröffnen, die sich jenseits technikdeterministischer oder kulturpessimistischer Einschätzungen bewegen. ; Considering the abundant promises and euphoric expectations (as well as apocalyptic visions of technology) that still dominate discourses on media and technology my analysis focuses on their cultural and social condition, the specific moment of their emergence, their continuous persistence, their socio-symbolic function, and their implications for social contexts of thought and perception and for hegemonic relations. The techno-deterministic notion of a 'paradigm change', the proclamation of a 'radically new' definition of the subject and the idea of a technically conditioned abolition of traditional dichotomies is in fact contrasted by a striking adherence to conventional and dichotome models of thought and of representation, and to the idea of an autonomous and technologically perfectionable subject. My analysis will on the one hand focus on the function of exaggerated visions of technological development (predicating a dissolution of space, time, matter and identity) and the function of ideas of 'alternative', 'virtual' 'spaces' for establishing specific notions of 'society' - indicating a specific relation of phantasm and symptom as I will show. On the other hand I will develop the definition of a political subject - not conceived as a sovereign actor, nor as an arbitrary variety, but rather as constituted on the basis of a structural impossibility inherent in language and which alone can be, due to this very impossibility or antagonism a subject of the political. In the course of this argument the notion of sexual difference will be critically revised. Furthermore I will develop a definition of agency adequate to provide the grounds and the argumentative tools for the contestability of cultural and social constructs. My emphasis will be on the interdependencies of these questions and I will base my arguments on a notion of Cyberspace that defines it as a socio-symbolic construct comprising both technical implementations as well as the respective discourses and which continuously has to be negotiated. My approach combines structural psychoanalytical theory, hegemony studies, art theory, film theory, media studies, gender studies and cultural studies. As a transdisciplinary critical theory of representation and considering its statement of problems, as well as its focus, it differs from predominant approaches to current developments of technology to create perspectives on current technological dispositives and media constellations beyond prevalent techno-euphoric or pessimistic views.