A self is the locus of agency

A self, then, is the outcome of a process, unique to life, of maintaining and perpetuating an individual form, a form that, as it is iterated over the generations, grows to fit the world around it at the same time that it comes to exhibit a certain circular closure that allows it to maintain its selfsame identity, which is forged with respect to that which it is not; anteaters re-present previous representations of ant tunnels in their lineage, but they are not themselves ant tunnels. Insofar as it strives to maintain its form, such a self acts for itself. A self, then, whether "skin-bound" or more distributed, is the locus of what we can call agency.

Eduardo Kohn, How Forests Think (University of California Press, 2013) p.76