Recent work in environmental philosophy has uncoupled the notion of agency from the human domain, arguing that the efficacy of nonhuman entities and processes can also be construed as a form of “agency.” In this paper, we study discursive constructions of nonhuman agency as they appear in a set of interviews revolving around fictional narratives. The participants were asked to read microfiction engaging with the nonhuman perspectives of entities such as a melting glacier or an endangered tree species. The analysis of the interviews centers on “complex” attributions of nonhuman agency – that is, attributions that involve a combination of agencies attributed to the nonhuman. We show that these complex attributions emerge more frequently in discussing the story (what we call the “storytalk”) than elsewhere in the interviews. We also explore the way in which such complex constructions of nonhuman agency challenge widespread assumptions about the natural world.

中文翻译：

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非人类机构的故事和复杂结构

最近在环境哲学方面的工作已经将能动性的概念从人类领域中分离出来，认为非人类实体和过程的功效也可以被解释为一种“能动性”形式。在这篇论文中，我们研究了非人类机构的话语结构，因为它们出现在围绕虚构叙事的一系列访谈中。参与者被要求阅读微型小说，这些小说涉及诸如融化的冰川或濒危树种等实体的非人类视角。对访谈的分析集中在非人类机构的“复杂”归因上——即涉及归因于非人类的机构组合的归因。我们表明，这些复杂的归因在讨论故事（我们称之为“故事谈话”）时比在访谈的其他地方更频繁地出现。