As I read your responses and reply comments to the keyword agency, I realized that I’d provided a more limited account and illustrations of the keyword than I intended. My research in modern rhetorical theory leads me toward assemblage agency that combines the actions and humans and technologies in creating meaning. But agency itself isn’t assembled. In and of itself, agency is the capacity to make meaningful decisions in the world. Only in the information age has agency been ascribed in any meaningful way to technologies or machines. Historically, agency is generally ascribed to humans. In rhetorical theory, the rhetor — the communicator in a traditional rhetorical situation of rhetor, purpose, and audience — has rhetorical agency, the capacity to persuade using language. For centuries in patriarchies, women have had little political or economic agency: property rights, voting, and political power were limited to and centered upon men, typically men of means. So when we talk about agency in media and culture, the perspective should be broader than the assemblage agency of humans and technologies. Those were the illustrations I provided in my readings, which indicates I need to provide a broader approach to agency in future semesters.
Consider the extent to which the other members of J Squad in Edge of Tomorrow had agency in their battle against the mimics. You could argue that only Cage had agency, and even that agency was ultimately granted by the mimics themselves, entirely accidentally, when the blood of an alpha landed on him. You could also argue that, in All You Need is Kill, technology had ultimate agency: the only way the mimics could be defeated was by becoming machines, dispassionate and dedicated to a singular goal of defeating mimics without regard for kinship with another human. In the Auto-Tune episode, you might ask where agency resides when vocalists like Charli XCX change the way they vocalize to sound better using auto-tune.