Abstract
How might the agency of the subaltern be conceptualised within the intersection of multiple worlds? Actor-Network theory’s translation framework for understanding agencyportraying this as entrepreneur and talking of a world in the making is arguably ‘imperialist’, ‘managerial’, and ‘monolithic.’ Draws from the enactment turn of ANT and insights into the politics of represention, this paper elaborates an alternative frameworkwhich focuses on displacement. By examining the case of dialysis patients the paper explores the displacing practices that follow the disruption of routines in dialysis. Patients have to go through a process of problematization, distribution, hybridization, and re-stabilization, in order to sustain the co-existence of their alternative practices with dialysis. Unlike entrepreneurs in the translation model who transform the world by interesting others, enduring trials, and becoming spokespersons for all, those patients who manage to displace and sustain the co-existence of multiple worlds avoid interesting, still less confronting, the hegemonic actors and claiming representation for themselves. This paper suggests the displacement of agency as a generic alternative.