Bouvard on Individuality as Historical Development
There are people working within GA who are liberal individualists on precisely the grounds you give here--that individuals, not as an ontologically primary category, but as a historical development, are real. Even in that case, though, we'd have to see this form of individuality as constrained by desires, resentments and sign-systems the individual obviously didn't create and can't transform significantly. But within that context, we could of course say that individuals "make decisions," "act on their beliefs," "change their minds," etc. We'd just want to be clear about what that entails.
My own approach is to avoid arguments over whether there are "really" individuals or not. You can't speak with someone without to some extent accepting their self-descriptions--the question is, what do you do with those self-descriptions? As individuals, I would see us as something like "delegates" or "emissaries" of the center, so, in speaking about others' wishes, desires, hopes, beliefs, etc., I would always want to frame things in terms of a dependence on and seeking out "instructions" from the center. Those hopes, beliefs, etc., in some sense at least come to us--we don't create them out of nothing. Insofar as we wish to wish for the right things, and hope to hope for the right things, we are looking for guidance from the ordering agencies we participate in. And so, first of all, as "individuals," we want those ordering agencies to be in order and provide us with coherent models.
Bouvard on Individuality as Historical Development — https://center.study/post/reddit-a-question-on-generative-anthropology-and-individualism