The Emancipatory Nature of Transformative Agency

Abstract

In this chapter we articulate how transformative agency via double stimulation in cultural-historical activity theory can be a form of emancipatory agency from below among those most historically excluded and marginalised. Generated in a six-year-long formative intervention focussing on African land restitution, we show that the emergence of emancipatory transformative agency involves responsive mediation in which second stimuli, suitable to arising contradictions and conflict of motives, need to be co-developed as the formative intervention process unfolds. Emancipatory transformative agency by double stimulation (ETADS) pathways involve complex and parallel forms of movement over time that are not necessarily linear. The chapter reveals that ETADS pathways emerge as communities take ethical-political ownership of co-directing the emancipatory direction of their own development in the formative intervention process. In the process they challenge deep-seated oppressions of longue durée, transform power relations, build intergenerational solidarity and make decisions that advance the common good.

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