Books by Gavin Rae
Western thinking on sexuality has historically affirmed a division between two sexes, each of whi... more Western thinking on sexuality has historically affirmed a division between two sexes, each of which is defined by unique fixed attributes that delineate its essence, and a privileging of the masculine over the feminine and heteronormative relations over alternatives. By engaging with psychoanalytic theory, phenomenology, feminist and gender theory, and the new materialisms, Gavin Rae shows how this model came under sustained and heterogeneous attack in the twentieth century. Rather than affirm one of these critical trajectories, Rae aims to rethink the problematic by turning to Walter Benjamin’s notion of concepts as constellations to develop an alternative model called sexuality as a constellation. Rae shows that reconceptualising sexuality as a constellation turns it into a multidimensional hermeneutic tool that brings to light the intricate dynamics of individual and social existence, both independently and in combination, while also reminding us that sexual expression is complex, constantly shifting, and absolutely singular.
This book responds to the long-standing objection that the poststructuralist decentring of the fo... more This book responds to the long-standing objection that the poststructuralist decentring of the foundational subject and subsequent affirmation of a constituted subject undermines the possibility for autonomous, intentional agency. Somewhat strangely, this issue has been largely ignored by commentators predisposed to poststructuralist thought. In contrast, I take up this problem to show that the question of the subject is a central one for poststructuralist thinkers, that they are aware of the problematic status of agency that arises from their decentering of the subject, and that they offer heterogeneous solutions to resolve it. First showing how this plays out in the thinking of Deleuze, Derrida, and Foucault, I demonstrate that it is with those poststructuralists associated with and influenced by Lacanian psychoanalysis that this issue most clearly comes to the fore, before arguing that it is the conceptual schema of Cornelius Castoriadis that best explains how the founded subject is capable of agency. What results is a re-evaluation of poststructuralist thought and a conception of the embodied subject as a continual process placed within and defined by a nexus of ever-changing configurations of the social, the symbolic, and the psychic.
Sovereign violence is a dominant issue in contemporary political theory and has attracted much at... more Sovereign violence is a dominant issue in contemporary political theory and has attracted much attention from proponents of critical theory, biopolitics, post-structuralism, and deconstruction. While heterogeneous, these commentators are united in rejecting the classic-juridical conception emanating from Bodin, Hobbes, and Rousseau that holds sovereignty to be indivisible and orientated towards the establishment and maintenance of juridical order. I argue that this rejection has been based on three distinct logics, termed here the radical-juridical, the biopolitical, and the bio-juridical. The first, outlined through chapters on Benjamin, Schmitt, Arendt, and Deleuze and Guattari, offers a number of increasingly radical critiques of the classic-juridical conception of sovereignty, but continues to focus the inquiry around the creation/preservation/disruption of the juridical order. It is then based on a radicalization of rather than fundamental departure from the classic-juridical model. The second (biopolitical) logic, outlined through chapters on Foucault and Agamben, goes further by undermining the primacy that the classic and radical-juridical models give to law. Instead, sovereign violence is held to be concerned with the regulation of life, with this occurring through exclusion from law. The first two critical logics do, however, set up a binary opposition between law and life: the former affirming the sovereign’s connection to the former, the latter reversing this to claim that it primarily refers to the latter. The third model—called the bio-juridical—overcomes this by developing a compatibilist understanding of both. Outlining this approach through Derrida’s analysis of the death penalty, I first identify why Derrida departs from the bipolitical model, before showing that his analysis of the death penalty reveals a phantasmatic figure who regulates life through the juridical exercise of violence. Rather than a privileging of the juridical order or the regulation of life, Derrida’s bio-juridical conception holds that sovereign violence is placed between law and life, simultaneously creating and regulating each through the other.
Although ‘evil’ has played an important, if subterranean, role in Western philosophical thought, ... more Although ‘evil’ has played an important, if subterranean, role in Western philosophical thought, this has not led to agreement regarding its meaning or significance. From this, the book defends four different but related arguments: (1) the problem of evil arose with the rise of Christianity from Judaism, (2) evil has not been defined by a singular meaning, but is heterogeneous, and (3) conceptions of evil are premised on various metaphysics, which, traditionally understood, were understood to create a fundamental cleavage between pre- and post-Kantian conceptions of the topic; the former based on theological Christian doctrine and the latter on non-theological premises. The fourth argument questions this narrative by showing that theological motifs, logic, figures, and ideas continue to implicitly influence post-Kantian, supposedly secular, thinking on the topic. In so doing, I argue that this does not simply point to a failure on the part of those supposedly secular theories, but shows that we have to abandon the notion that pits theology against secularity or that sees the latter entailing the absence of the former. Instead, it reveals that secularity entails an on-going and complex relationship to the theological tradition it emanates from. With this, the book contributes to the so-called theological turn that has marked contemporary theory and specifically the line of critique that disrupts the notion that there exists a straightforward binary opposition between the theological and secular.
This book analyses the foundations of political life by undertaking a critical comparative analys... more This book analyses the foundations of political life by undertaking a critical comparative analysis of the political theologies of Carl Schmitt and Emmanuel Levinas. In so doing, it contributes to key debates in contemporary political philosophy, specifically those relating to the nature of, and the relationship between, the theological, the political, and the ethical, as well as those questioning the existence of ahistoric metaphysical, ontological, and epistemological foundations. While the theological is often associated with belief in a fixed foundation such as God or the truth of a religion, I identify another sense rooted in epistemology. On this understanding, the ontological limitations of human cognition mean that, ultimately, human truth is based in faith and so can never be certain. The argument developed suggests that Levinas’ conception of the political is grounded in theology in the sense of religion, particularly the revelations of Judaism. For this reason, Levinas claims that the political decision is based on how to implement a prior religiously-inspired norm: justice. Schmitt, in contrast, develops a conception of the political rooted in epistemic faith to claim that the political decision is normless. While sympathetic to Schmitt’s conception of theology and its relationship to the political, I conclude by arguing that the emphasis Levinas places on responsibility is crucial to understanding the implications of this. The continuing relevance of Schmitt’s and Levinas’ political theologies is that they teach us that, while the political decision is ultimately normless, we bear an infinite responsibility for the consequences of this normless decision.
This groundbreaking book engages with the relationship between ontology, metaphysics, and epistem... more This groundbreaking book engages with the relationship between ontology, metaphysics, and epistemology in Heidegger and Deleuze. Showing that the latter are rooted in their respective ontologies not only provides a clear, detailed, and holistic outline of all three, but also reveals that Heidegger and Deleuze are highly critical of thinking that associates being with identity. While they both seek to overcome this association by affirming being as becoming, they differ in terms of what this becoming entails with Deleuze's onto-genetic account of being's rhizomic-becoming going beyond Heidegger's temporal account. However, while Deleuze attempts to think as and from difference, the relationship between identity and difference is explored to offer a tri-partite account of identity that shows that, despite his claims to the contrary, Deleuze's ontological categories continue to depend on a form of the identity he aims to overcome.
This book provides a comparative analysis of the responses that Hegel and Sartre give to the ques... more This book provides a comparative analysis of the responses that Hegel and Sartre give to the question of freedom, including the processes that take place for this to occur. To do so, the discussion is wide-ranging, engaging with each thinker’s conceptions of freedom, ethics, consciousness, social relations, group formations, and the self, before comparing the two to show that it is Hegel who provides the more logically-consistent, subtle, and holistic analysis. However, the conclusion argues that a number of questions remain regarding the social formation that Hegel thinks is necessary to allow the individual to overcome his alienation from the social world. As such, the battle for human self-understanding and fulfilment is far from over.
Edited Books by Gavin Rae
Poststructuralism has long been acknowledged to offer a radical critique of the foundational subj... more Poststructuralism has long been acknowledged to offer a radical critique of the foundational subject as a precursor to affirming a constituted subject. Its detractors have however held that the resultant position cannot offer a coherent account of agency (strong version) or, alternatively, that while it may be able to account for non-subjective agency it is unable to develop a coherent explanation for subjective agency (weak version). Somewhat strangely, this issue has been largely ignored by commentators predisposed to poststructuralist thought. In contrast, this volume focuses on the works of Judith Butler, Cornelius Castoriadis, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Luce Irigaray, Jacques Lacan, and Catherine Malabou, to show that the question of the subject is a key one for many poststructuralist thinkers, that they are aware of the problematic status of agency that arises from their decentering of the foundational subject, and that they offer heterogeneous responses to it. Subjective Agency and Poststructuralism will therefore be an invaluable resource for researchers and advanced students interested in philosophy, political theory, psychoanalysis, critical theory, history of ideas, feminist theory, and cultural studies.
Introduction: Agency and Poststructuralism
Cillian Ó Fathaigh (Jagiellonian University, Poland) and Gavin Rae (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain)
Part I: Ethics
1. The Immanence of Desire: Subjectivity and Agency in Anti-Oedipus
Sean Bowden (Deakin University, Australia)
2. Agency and the Imaginary: Lacan, Irigaray, Castoriadis
Gavin Rae (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain)
3. What Can Subjects Do? Judith Butler’s Notion of Agency
Emma Ingala (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain)
4. Reading Agency in Suspension: Derrida and the Undecideable
Lisa Foran (University College Dublin, Ireland)
Part II: History and Aesthetics
5. “Something Will Turn Up”: Why Derrida Remains Trapped in Modernity
Sacha Golob (King’s College London, England)
6. What is an Event to a Subject? What is a Subject to an Event? Musical Folds
Michael Székely (Temple University, USA)
Part III: Politics
7. Foucault’s Agentive Discharge
Luke Collison (Cologne University, Germany)
8. Political Plasticity: Catherine Malabou’s Anarchic Agents
Cillian Ó Fathaigh (Jagiellonian University, Poland)
Philosophy has often taken itself to be distinguished from and superior to alternative ways of th... more Philosophy has often taken itself to be distinguished from and superior to alternative ways of thinking. To do so, philosophical thinking has found itself rigidly affirming the need to think within borders to obtain conceptual clarity and certainty and/or secure its own independent existence. The chapters in this volume call into question the need to retreat behind demarcated boundaries that mark the domain of philosophy proper, to instead offer a performative account of how philosophy can creatively work across (geographical, cultural, linguistic) borders, without foreclosing that analysis conceptually. In so doing, the contributors tackle issues including the historical establishment of philosophical borders, the metaphysics of philosophical borders, the relationship between Western and non-Western thinking, the ethics of transgressing borders, and the political implications of Western rationality on and for non-Western societies. Philosophy Across Borders will therefore be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in philosophy, aesthetics, critical theory, comparative philosophy, cultural studies, feminist theory, history of ideas, political theory, and postcolonial studies.
Table of Contents
Introduction: Philosophy Across Borders
Emma Ingala and Gavin Rae (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain)
Part I: Critique
1. Beyond Hope: The Borders Between Theoretical and Practical Philosophy
Morganna Lambeth (California State University: Fullerton, USA)
2. The Metaphysics Beneath a Limit: Criticism from Contemporary Liminal Theory
Gonzalo Núñez Erices (Universidad Católica del Maule, Chile)
3. Philosophy without Borders, or the Permanence of Questioning
Tamara Caraus (University of Lisbon, Portugal)
Part II: Crossing Cultures
4. Thinking “Orientally”: Nietzsche and Indian Philosophy
Emma Syea (King’s College London, England)
5. Adorno and the Work of the Spirit: Modernism in Aesthetic Terms
William D. Melaney (American University in Cairo, Egypt)
Part III: Ethics
6. Against the Intolerable: On Limits, Boundaries, and Transgression
Guilel Treiber (Radboud University Nijmegen, Holland)
7. Foucault, Feminism, and the Limits of Experience
Liesbeth Schoonheim (Humboldt University, Germany)
8. Where are we when we think from within the Body?
Adriana Zaharijević (University of Belgrade, Serbia)
Part IV: Politics
9. No Accounting for Taste: Aesthesis on the Borders of Philosophy
Cillian Ó Fathaigh (Jagiellonian University, Poland)
10. Crossing Lines between Deleuze and Négritude: A Vitalist Ontology of Post-colonial War Machines
Sara Raimondi (Northeastern University London, England) and Hannah Richter (University of Sussex, England)
This volume brings together an international array of scholars to reconsider the meaning and plac... more This volume brings together an international array of scholars to reconsider the meaning and place of poststructuralism historically and demonstrate some of the ways in which it continues to be relevant, especially for debates in aesthetics, ethics, and politics. The book’s chapters focus on the works of Butler, Deleuze, Derrida, Foucault, Irigaray, Kristeva, Lacan, and Lyotard—in combination with those of Agamben, Luhman, Nancy, and Nietzsche—and examine issues including biopolitics, culture, embodiment, epistemology, history, music, temporality, political resistance, psychoanalysis, revolt, and the visual arts. The contributors use poststructuralism as a hermeneutical strategy that rejects the traditional affirmation of unity, totality, transparency, and representation to instead focus on the foundational importance of open-ended becoming, difference, the unknowable, and expression. This approach allows for a more expansive definition of poststructuralism and helps demonstrate how it has contributed to debates across philosophy and other disciplines. 'Historical Traces and Future Pathways of Poststructuralism' will be of particular interest to researchers in philosophy, politics, political theory, critical theory, aesthetics, feminist theory, cultural studies, intellectual history, psychoanalysis, and sociology.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Gavin Rae and Emma Ingala
Part I: Historical Traces
1. Nietzsche and the Emergence of Poststructuralism
Alan D. Schrift (Grinnell College, USA)
2. Poststructuralism in America: From Epistemological Relativism to Post-Truth?
Kevin Kennedy (CY Cergy Paris University, France).
3. From Choirboy to Funeral Orator: Foucault’s Complicated Relationship to Structuralism
Guilel Treiber (KU Leuven, Belgium)
4. Haunted by Derrida: Reading Benjamin’s ‘Critique of Violence’ and Derrida’s ‘Force of Law’ in Constellation
James R. Martel (San Francisco State University, USA).
Part II: Future Pathways: Aesthetics
5. A Poststructuralism for the Visual Arts
Ashley Woodward (University of Dundee, Scotland).
6. What Moves Music?: Poststructuralism, Pulsion, and Musical Ontology
Michael David Székely (Temple University, USA)
Part III: Ethical Openings
7. Not Just a Body: Lacan on Corporeality
Emma Ingala (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain)
8. The Ethics and Politics of Temporality: Judith Butler, Embodiment, and Narrativity
Rosine Kelz (Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies—Potsdam, Germany)
Part IV: Political Apertures
9. Re-thinking Poststructuralism with Deleuze and Luhmann: Autopoiesis, Immanence, Politics
Hannah Richter (University of Hertfordshire, England)
10. Kristeva’s Wager on the Future of Revolt
S. K. Keltner (Kennesaw State University, USA)
11. Strategies of Political Resistance: Agamben and Irigaray
Gavin Rae (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain).
Violence has long been noted to be a fundamental aspect of the human condition. Traditionally, ho... more Violence has long been noted to be a fundamental aspect of the human condition. Traditionally, however, philosophical discussions have tended to approach it through the lens of warfare and/or limit it to physical forms. This changed in the twentieth century as the nature and meaning of ‘violence’ itself became a conceptual problem. Guided by the contention that Walter Benjamin’s famous 1921 ‘Critique of Violence’ essay inaugurated this turn to an explicit questioning of violence, this collection brings together an international array of scholars to engage with how subsequent thinkers—Agamben, Arendt, Benjamin, Butler, Castoriadis, Derrida, Fanon, Gramsci, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, and Schmitt—grappled with the meaning and place of violence. The aim is not to reduce these multiple responses to a singular one, but to highlight the heterogeneous ways in which the concept has been inquired into and the manifold meanings of it that have resulted. To this end, each chapter focuses on a different approach or thinker within twentieth and twenty-first century European philosophy, with many of them tackling the issue through the mediation of other topics and disciplines, including biopolitics, epistemology, ethics, culture, law, politics, and psychoanalysis. As such, the volume will be an invaluable resource for those interested in Critical Theory, Cultural Studies, History of Ideas, Philosophy, Politics, Political Theory, Psychology, and Sociology.
Table of Contents
The Meanings of Violence: Introduction
Gavin Rae and Emma Ingala
Part I: Political Myth and Social Transformation
1. Walter Benjamin and the General Strike: Non-Violence and the Archeon
James Martel (San Francisco State University, USA)
2. Violence, Divine or Otherwise: Myth and Violence in the Benjamin-Schmitt Constellation
Hjalmar Falk (University of Gothenburg, Sweden)
3. Violence and Civilization: Gramsci, Machiavelli, and Sorel
Robert P. Jackson (Manchester Metropolitan University, England)
4. The Violence of Oblivion: Hannah Arendt and the Tragic Loss of Revolutionary Politics
Liesbeth Schoonheim (KU Leuven, Belgium,)
Part II: Sociality and Meaning
5. The World and the Embodied Subject: Humanism, Terror, and Violence
Stephen A. Noble (Universite de Paris X (Paris—Nanterre), France)
6. Dialectics got the Upper Hand: Fanon, Violence, and the Quest[ion] of Liberation
Nigel C. Gibson (Emerson College, USA)
7. Sartre’s Later Work: Towards a Notion of Institutional Violence
Marieke Mueller (King’s College London, England)
8. The Original Polemos: Phenomenology and Violence in Jacques Derrida
Valeria Campos-Salvaterra (Universidad Catolica de Valparaiso, Chile)
Part III: From Subjectivity to Biopolitics
9. Taming the Little Screaming Monster: Castoriadis, Violence, and the Creation of the Individual
Gavin Rae (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain)
10. Judith Butler: From a Formative Violence to an Ethics of Non-Violence
Emma Ingala (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain)
11. Biopolitics and Resistance: The Meaning of Violence in the Work of Giorgio Agamben
German Primera (University of Brighton, England).
Despite, or quite possibly because of, the structuralist, post-structuralist, and deconstructioni... more Despite, or quite possibly because of, the structuralist, post-structuralist, and deconstructionist critiques of subjectivity, master signifiers, and political foundations, contemporary philosophy has been marked by a resurgence in interest in questions of subjectivity and the political. Guided by the contention that different conceptions of the political are, at least implicitly, committed to specific conceptions of subjectivity while different conceptions of subjectivity have different political implications, this collection brings together an international selection of scholars to explore these notions and their connection. Rather than privilege one approach or conception of the subjectivity-political relationship, this volume emphasizes the nature and status of the and in the ‘subjectivity’ and ‘the political’ schema. By thinking from the place between subjectivity and the political, it is able to explore this relationship from a multitude of perspectives, directions, and thinkers to show the heterogeneity, openness, and contested nature of it. While the contributions deal with different themes or thinkers, the themes/thinkers are linked historically and/or conceptually, thereby providing coherence to the volume. Thinkers addressed include Arendt, Butler, Levinas, Agamben, Derrida, Kristeva, Adorno, Gramsci, Mill, Hegel, and Heidegger, while the subjectivity-political relation is engaged with through the mediation of the law-political, ethics-politics, theological-political, inside-outside, subject-person, and individual-institution relationships, as well as through concepts such as genius, happiness, abjection, and ugliness. The original essays in this volume will be of interest to researchers in philosophy, politics, political theory, critical theory, cultural studies, history of ideas, psychology, and sociology.
Table of Contents
Editor’s Introduction: Between Subjectivity and the Political
Gavin Rae and Emma Ingala
PART I: Political Subjectivities
1. The Limits of Nomos: Hannah Arendt on Law, Politics, and the Polis
Liesbeth Schoonheim (KU Leuven, Belgium)
2. From Hannah Arendt to Judith Butler: The Conditions of the Political
Emma Ingala (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain)
3. Between Failure and Redemption: Emmanuel Levinas on the Political
Gavin Rae (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain)
4. The Significant Nothing: Agamben, Theology, and Political Subjectivity
Piotr Sawczyński (Jagiellonian University, Poland)
5. Aporias of Foreignness: Transnational Encounters through Cinema
Katarzyna Marciniak (Ohio University, USA)
PART II: Political Subjectivities
6. The Abject and the Ugly: Kristeva, Adorno, and the Formation of the Subject
Surti Singh (American University in Cairo, Egypt)
7. Antonio Gramsci: Persons, Subjectivity, and the Political
Robert P. Jackson (Manchester Metropolitan University, England)
8. Embodied Consciousness and Political Subjectivity in the work of Merleau-Ponty
Stephen A. Noble (Université de Paris-Est—Créteil , France)
9. John Stuart Mill and the Liberal Genius
Yoel Mitrani (Sciences Po Paris, France)
10. Hegel’s Ethical Life and Heidegger’s ‘They’: How Political is the Self?
Antonio Gómez Ramos (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain).
Journal Articles by Gavin Rae
forthcoming in Philosophy and Social Criticism
Although it is well-known that Hannah Arendt gives a privileged role to action, her comments on t... more Although it is well-known that Hannah Arendt gives a privileged role to action, her comments on the relationship between action and will(ing) have caused much confusion in the literature: commentators are split on whether her analysis of willing in The Human Condition (from 1958) and the essay "What is Freedom?" (from 1960) contradict or are complemented by her later analysis in The Life of the Mind (from 1978). I defend the latter position, but in contrast to others who have affirmed the same argument but focus on other themes to show it, I actually set out to show that Arendt offers a remarkably consistent analysis of the relationship between action and will(ing) throughout her work. To do so, I adopt a somewhat counterintuitive hermeneutical strategy by starting with her late analysis of will(ing) in The Life of the Mind (from 1978) where she most explicitly distinguishes between the historically dominant form of will(ing) of the liberium arbitrium and what I call natal-will(ing), before reading that distinction back into her earlier analyses of freedom in "What is Freedom?" (published in 1960), and action in The Human Condition (published in 1958). This hermeneutical strategy is underpinned by the claim that the distinction between two forms of will(ing) made explicit in The Life of the Mind is implicit to those earlier works. This shows that Arendt's critique of will(ing) in her earlier works is a critique of the free will tradition, not willing per se, while her affirmation of action in those texts, implies the affirmation of the other form of willing, tied to natality and the power to begin anew, that she subsequently explicitly identifies in The Life of the Mind.
forthcoming in Philosophy and Social Criticism
Despite Jean-Paul Sartre and Cornelius Castoriadis placing the imagination centre stage in their ... more Despite Jean-Paul Sartre and Cornelius Castoriadis placing the imagination centre stage in their respective conceptual theories, little work has been done to bring them into conversation on this issue or, indeed, any other. This is perhaps not surprising given Sartre’s early work on this topic has tended to be downplayed in favour of his affirmation of freedom, while Castoriadis not only denigrates Sartre’s thinking generally and his account of the imagination specifically but also posits their relationship as one of opposition. In contrast, this article brings them into conversation on the question of the imagination to call into question Castoriadis assessment of their relation. To do so, I outline Sartre’s position in The Imaginary, showing that Castoriadis assessment of Sartre’s notion is based on a problematic, if common, misunderstanding of Sartre’s notion of nothingness and its relationship to creativity. Having overcome the opposition that Castoriadis affirms between their respective positions, I argue that, while there certainly are differences between their positions, there are also important points of agreement and overlap between them, especially regarding the constitutive role that the imagination plays for consciousness, and the relationships between the imagination and freedom and the imagination and creativity, that point to a shared and original approach.
Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, vol. 55, n. 3. 2024, pp. 201–220
The Western philosophic tradition has tended to tie the question of action to that of freedom, wi... more The Western philosophic tradition has tended to tie the question of action to that of freedom, with the relationship structured around the free will/determinism opposition. In contrast, I show that in Being and Nothingness, Sartre offers a stringent and radical critique of these approaches. I briefly outline the conceptual parameters of Sartre's early ontology, before showing that he rejects the free will tradition because of its underlying conception of freedom and insistence that action is reflective and will-based. According to Sartre, consciousness is not a sum of parts, with one aspect (will) guiding the rest. Consciousness is a differentiated whole, divided between reflective and pre-reflective levels. Will is tied to the reflective level of consciousness and so cannot be said to be foundational given that reflectivity depends upon prereflectivity. Instead, it is an expressive effect of consciousness's spontaneous, pre-reflective, projection of itself towards a particular end and value.
Critical Horizons, vol. 23, n. 2, 2022, pp. 172-187.
Judith Butler's work has tended to be read through two axes: (1) an early gender theory/later eth... more Judith Butler's work has tended to be read through two axes: (1) an early gender theory/later ethical theory division, and/or (2) an ethical/political divide. In contrast, I aim to undercut both hermeneutical strategies by turning to her epistemology, as manifested through her analyses of normativity and "frames," to argue that the latter acts as the hinge uniting her so-called early and later works and the ethical and political dimensions of her thinking. From this premise, I maintain that Butler (1) affirms that these frames are conditioned by power relations and contingency, (2) points to the existence of multiple frameworks that simultaneously compete against one another, and (3) insists that frames are culturally specific and determining of the categories that identify what counts as a legitimate life for a particular community and the ways in which each (form of) life is to be treated. By highlighting the social, performative, and normative dimensions of epistemic practices, Butler offers an epistemology based in the construction of contingent and contestable frameworks and shows how the contestation between distinct frameworks conditions the ethical-political life of each community.
Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory, vol. 23, n. 2-3, 2022, pp. 238–258.
This paper outlines and engages with Jacques Derrida's notion of 'autoimmunity' to argue that it ... more This paper outlines and engages with Jacques Derrida's notion of 'autoimmunity' to argue that it offers a unique resource for understanding the potential for critique inherent in and resultant from the COVID-19 pandemic. I first offer a brief genealogy of the terms 'immunity/autoimmunity' to show how they operate in biological, philosophical, and socio-political discourses, before outlining Derrida's conception of the logic of autoimmunity, highlighting that it is not simply a negative phenomenon but a structural necessity of identity that opens up future possibilities. I then show how his logic of autoimmunity can be used to understand different dimensions of the coronavirus pandemic, including the possibilities for critique opened up therein. Crucially, such possibility arises not from a position external to the dominant logic or one that simply wishes to escape it, but because of the autoimmune structures internal to it. With this, I conclude that Derrida's notion of autoimmunity points to an innovative way to understand social transformation from within the dynamics governing a dominant logic, all the while reminding and allowing us to think the resultant possibilities for new forms of critique and practices.
Thesis Eleven, vol. 170, n. 1, 2022, pp. 117-135.
This article defends Ernesto Laclau against the charge that his work, manifested most clearly in ... more This article defends Ernesto Laclau against the charge that his work, manifested most clearly in On Populist Reason, affirms an authoritarian politics to account for the genesis of collective identity. To outline this, I read Laclau's thought through three logics-termed the logics of universal imposition, negation, and symbolic mediation-to argue that he rejects the first but adopts the latter two, with the logic of symbolic mediation being particularly important. Rather than unity resulting when distinct groups agree over a positive meaning of a signifier or when it is imposed on them by an authoritarian leader, Laclau claims that unity depends upon the existence of empty signifiers that lack substantial meaning. Engaging with the structure and functioning of this lack, I utilize Laclau's notion of 'constitutive distortion' to highlight an often overlooked structural component of his account that I call 'misunderstanding'. Rather than a negative occurrence, misunderstanding is a fundamental and positive condition of collective identity because it permits the various groups to affirm different, even contradictory, positions regarding the meaning of empty signifiers (permitted by the fundamental lack of such signifiers), all the while (through the shared but mistaken belief that they agree over its meaning) binding each group into a collective identity. This misunderstanding, which must remain hidden from the participants of the collective identity, is a fundamental condition of the process through which collective identity is created and sustained because it permits the various groups to believe that they share a collective identity while maintaining the heterogeneity that is necessary, on Laclau's telling, for the continued existence of the collective.
Sophia: International Journal of Philosophy and Traditions, vol. 62, n. 2, 2023, pp. 381-403.
Michel's Foucault's later work has been the subject of much critical interest regarding the quest... more Michel's Foucault's later work has been the subject of much critical interest regarding the question of whether it provides a normative stance that prescribes how the self ought to act. Having first outlined the nature of the debate, I engage with Foucault's comparative analysis of the ethical systems of ancient Greeks and Christianity to show that he holds that the former maintains that the ethical subject was premised not on adherence to a priori rules as in Christianity, but from and around an ongoing process of practical experimentation. From this, Foucault goes on to describe the practices through which the self acted to make and re-make itself, which leads to the question of whether such descriptions also contain prescriptions as to how the self should act. I argue that they do contain a prescriptively normative stance, but in a very specific sense. Rather than delineating the specific ethical commitments we should adopt, Foucault takes off from the example of the ancient Greeks to insist that individuals should adopt an indeterminate orientating principle based on absolute openness to each context, with this principle given content through a context-specific, spontaneous, ongoing , and inherently individual, albeit socially situated, process of practical experimentation. The result is a highly original account of normativity that makes individuals absolutely responsible for themselves and their ethical activities in each moment.
Human Studies, vol. 44, n. 3, 2021, pp. 351–371.
The Heidegger–Deleuze relationship has attracted significant attention of late. This paper contri... more The Heidegger–Deleuze relationship has attracted significant attention of late. This paper contributes to this line of research by examining Deleuze’s claim, recently reiterated and developed by Philip Tonner, that Heidegger offers a univocal conception of Being where there is one sense of Being that is said throughout all entities. Although these authors maintain that this claim holds across Heidegger’s oeuvre, I purposefully adopt a conservative hermeneutical strategy that focuses on two writings from the 1927–1928 period—Being and Time and the following year’s lecture course translated as The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic—and emphasize the lesson of the ontological difference that Being is always the Being of an entity, to argue that with regards to these texts, at least, an alternative equivocal interpretation is possible in which Being is always said differently. The conclusion draws out the implications of this for the relationship between Heidegger’s fundamental ontology and Deleuze’s differential ontology.
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Books by Gavin Rae
Edited Books by Gavin Rae
Introduction: Agency and Poststructuralism
Cillian Ó Fathaigh (Jagiellonian University, Poland) and Gavin Rae (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain)
Part I: Ethics
1. The Immanence of Desire: Subjectivity and Agency in Anti-Oedipus
Sean Bowden (Deakin University, Australia)
2. Agency and the Imaginary: Lacan, Irigaray, Castoriadis
Gavin Rae (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain)
3. What Can Subjects Do? Judith Butler’s Notion of Agency
Emma Ingala (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain)
4. Reading Agency in Suspension: Derrida and the Undecideable
Lisa Foran (University College Dublin, Ireland)
Part II: History and Aesthetics
5. “Something Will Turn Up”: Why Derrida Remains Trapped in Modernity
Sacha Golob (King’s College London, England)
6. What is an Event to a Subject? What is a Subject to an Event? Musical Folds
Michael Székely (Temple University, USA)
Part III: Politics
7. Foucault’s Agentive Discharge
Luke Collison (Cologne University, Germany)
8. Political Plasticity: Catherine Malabou’s Anarchic Agents
Cillian Ó Fathaigh (Jagiellonian University, Poland)
Table of Contents
Introduction: Philosophy Across Borders
Emma Ingala and Gavin Rae (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain)
Part I: Critique
1. Beyond Hope: The Borders Between Theoretical and Practical Philosophy
Morganna Lambeth (California State University: Fullerton, USA)
2. The Metaphysics Beneath a Limit: Criticism from Contemporary Liminal Theory
Gonzalo Núñez Erices (Universidad Católica del Maule, Chile)
3. Philosophy without Borders, or the Permanence of Questioning
Tamara Caraus (University of Lisbon, Portugal)
Part II: Crossing Cultures
4. Thinking “Orientally”: Nietzsche and Indian Philosophy
Emma Syea (King’s College London, England)
5. Adorno and the Work of the Spirit: Modernism in Aesthetic Terms
William D. Melaney (American University in Cairo, Egypt)
Part III: Ethics
6. Against the Intolerable: On Limits, Boundaries, and Transgression
Guilel Treiber (Radboud University Nijmegen, Holland)
7. Foucault, Feminism, and the Limits of Experience
Liesbeth Schoonheim (Humboldt University, Germany)
8. Where are we when we think from within the Body?
Adriana Zaharijević (University of Belgrade, Serbia)
Part IV: Politics
9. No Accounting for Taste: Aesthesis on the Borders of Philosophy
Cillian Ó Fathaigh (Jagiellonian University, Poland)
10. Crossing Lines between Deleuze and Négritude: A Vitalist Ontology of Post-colonial War Machines
Sara Raimondi (Northeastern University London, England) and Hannah Richter (University of Sussex, England)
Table of Contents
Introduction
Gavin Rae and Emma Ingala
Part I: Historical Traces
1. Nietzsche and the Emergence of Poststructuralism
Alan D. Schrift (Grinnell College, USA)
2. Poststructuralism in America: From Epistemological Relativism to Post-Truth?
Kevin Kennedy (CY Cergy Paris University, France).
3. From Choirboy to Funeral Orator: Foucault’s Complicated Relationship to Structuralism
Guilel Treiber (KU Leuven, Belgium)
4. Haunted by Derrida: Reading Benjamin’s ‘Critique of Violence’ and Derrida’s ‘Force of Law’ in Constellation
James R. Martel (San Francisco State University, USA).
Part II: Future Pathways: Aesthetics
5. A Poststructuralism for the Visual Arts
Ashley Woodward (University of Dundee, Scotland).
6. What Moves Music?: Poststructuralism, Pulsion, and Musical Ontology
Michael David Székely (Temple University, USA)
Part III: Ethical Openings
7. Not Just a Body: Lacan on Corporeality
Emma Ingala (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain)
8. The Ethics and Politics of Temporality: Judith Butler, Embodiment, and Narrativity
Rosine Kelz (Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies—Potsdam, Germany)
Part IV: Political Apertures
9. Re-thinking Poststructuralism with Deleuze and Luhmann: Autopoiesis, Immanence, Politics
Hannah Richter (University of Hertfordshire, England)
10. Kristeva’s Wager on the Future of Revolt
S. K. Keltner (Kennesaw State University, USA)
11. Strategies of Political Resistance: Agamben and Irigaray
Gavin Rae (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain).
Table of Contents
The Meanings of Violence: Introduction
Gavin Rae and Emma Ingala
Part I: Political Myth and Social Transformation
1. Walter Benjamin and the General Strike: Non-Violence and the Archeon
James Martel (San Francisco State University, USA)
2. Violence, Divine or Otherwise: Myth and Violence in the Benjamin-Schmitt Constellation
Hjalmar Falk (University of Gothenburg, Sweden)
3. Violence and Civilization: Gramsci, Machiavelli, and Sorel
Robert P. Jackson (Manchester Metropolitan University, England)
4. The Violence of Oblivion: Hannah Arendt and the Tragic Loss of Revolutionary Politics
Liesbeth Schoonheim (KU Leuven, Belgium,)
Part II: Sociality and Meaning
5. The World and the Embodied Subject: Humanism, Terror, and Violence
Stephen A. Noble (Universite de Paris X (Paris—Nanterre), France)
6. Dialectics got the Upper Hand: Fanon, Violence, and the Quest[ion] of Liberation
Nigel C. Gibson (Emerson College, USA)
7. Sartre’s Later Work: Towards a Notion of Institutional Violence
Marieke Mueller (King’s College London, England)
8. The Original Polemos: Phenomenology and Violence in Jacques Derrida
Valeria Campos-Salvaterra (Universidad Catolica de Valparaiso, Chile)
Part III: From Subjectivity to Biopolitics
9. Taming the Little Screaming Monster: Castoriadis, Violence, and the Creation of the Individual
Gavin Rae (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain)
10. Judith Butler: From a Formative Violence to an Ethics of Non-Violence
Emma Ingala (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain)
11. Biopolitics and Resistance: The Meaning of Violence in the Work of Giorgio Agamben
German Primera (University of Brighton, England).
Table of Contents
Editor’s Introduction: Between Subjectivity and the Political
Gavin Rae and Emma Ingala
PART I: Political Subjectivities
1. The Limits of Nomos: Hannah Arendt on Law, Politics, and the Polis
Liesbeth Schoonheim (KU Leuven, Belgium)
2. From Hannah Arendt to Judith Butler: The Conditions of the Political
Emma Ingala (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain)
3. Between Failure and Redemption: Emmanuel Levinas on the Political
Gavin Rae (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain)
4. The Significant Nothing: Agamben, Theology, and Political Subjectivity
Piotr Sawczyński (Jagiellonian University, Poland)
5. Aporias of Foreignness: Transnational Encounters through Cinema
Katarzyna Marciniak (Ohio University, USA)
PART II: Political Subjectivities
6. The Abject and the Ugly: Kristeva, Adorno, and the Formation of the Subject
Surti Singh (American University in Cairo, Egypt)
7. Antonio Gramsci: Persons, Subjectivity, and the Political
Robert P. Jackson (Manchester Metropolitan University, England)
8. Embodied Consciousness and Political Subjectivity in the work of Merleau-Ponty
Stephen A. Noble (Université de Paris-Est—Créteil , France)
9. John Stuart Mill and the Liberal Genius
Yoel Mitrani (Sciences Po Paris, France)
10. Hegel’s Ethical Life and Heidegger’s ‘They’: How Political is the Self?
Antonio Gómez Ramos (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain).
Journal Articles by Gavin Rae
Introduction: Agency and Poststructuralism
Cillian Ó Fathaigh (Jagiellonian University, Poland) and Gavin Rae (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain)
Part I: Ethics
1. The Immanence of Desire: Subjectivity and Agency in Anti-Oedipus
Sean Bowden (Deakin University, Australia)
2. Agency and the Imaginary: Lacan, Irigaray, Castoriadis
Gavin Rae (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain)
3. What Can Subjects Do? Judith Butler’s Notion of Agency
Emma Ingala (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain)
4. Reading Agency in Suspension: Derrida and the Undecideable
Lisa Foran (University College Dublin, Ireland)
Part II: History and Aesthetics
5. “Something Will Turn Up”: Why Derrida Remains Trapped in Modernity
Sacha Golob (King’s College London, England)
6. What is an Event to a Subject? What is a Subject to an Event? Musical Folds
Michael Székely (Temple University, USA)
Part III: Politics
7. Foucault’s Agentive Discharge
Luke Collison (Cologne University, Germany)
8. Political Plasticity: Catherine Malabou’s Anarchic Agents
Cillian Ó Fathaigh (Jagiellonian University, Poland)
Table of Contents
Introduction: Philosophy Across Borders
Emma Ingala and Gavin Rae (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain)
Part I: Critique
1. Beyond Hope: The Borders Between Theoretical and Practical Philosophy
Morganna Lambeth (California State University: Fullerton, USA)
2. The Metaphysics Beneath a Limit: Criticism from Contemporary Liminal Theory
Gonzalo Núñez Erices (Universidad Católica del Maule, Chile)
3. Philosophy without Borders, or the Permanence of Questioning
Tamara Caraus (University of Lisbon, Portugal)
Part II: Crossing Cultures
4. Thinking “Orientally”: Nietzsche and Indian Philosophy
Emma Syea (King’s College London, England)
5. Adorno and the Work of the Spirit: Modernism in Aesthetic Terms
William D. Melaney (American University in Cairo, Egypt)
Part III: Ethics
6. Against the Intolerable: On Limits, Boundaries, and Transgression
Guilel Treiber (Radboud University Nijmegen, Holland)
7. Foucault, Feminism, and the Limits of Experience
Liesbeth Schoonheim (Humboldt University, Germany)
8. Where are we when we think from within the Body?
Adriana Zaharijević (University of Belgrade, Serbia)
Part IV: Politics
9. No Accounting for Taste: Aesthesis on the Borders of Philosophy
Cillian Ó Fathaigh (Jagiellonian University, Poland)
10. Crossing Lines between Deleuze and Négritude: A Vitalist Ontology of Post-colonial War Machines
Sara Raimondi (Northeastern University London, England) and Hannah Richter (University of Sussex, England)
Table of Contents
Introduction
Gavin Rae and Emma Ingala
Part I: Historical Traces
1. Nietzsche and the Emergence of Poststructuralism
Alan D. Schrift (Grinnell College, USA)
2. Poststructuralism in America: From Epistemological Relativism to Post-Truth?
Kevin Kennedy (CY Cergy Paris University, France).
3. From Choirboy to Funeral Orator: Foucault’s Complicated Relationship to Structuralism
Guilel Treiber (KU Leuven, Belgium)
4. Haunted by Derrida: Reading Benjamin’s ‘Critique of Violence’ and Derrida’s ‘Force of Law’ in Constellation
James R. Martel (San Francisco State University, USA).
Part II: Future Pathways: Aesthetics
5. A Poststructuralism for the Visual Arts
Ashley Woodward (University of Dundee, Scotland).
6. What Moves Music?: Poststructuralism, Pulsion, and Musical Ontology
Michael David Székely (Temple University, USA)
Part III: Ethical Openings
7. Not Just a Body: Lacan on Corporeality
Emma Ingala (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain)
8. The Ethics and Politics of Temporality: Judith Butler, Embodiment, and Narrativity
Rosine Kelz (Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies—Potsdam, Germany)
Part IV: Political Apertures
9. Re-thinking Poststructuralism with Deleuze and Luhmann: Autopoiesis, Immanence, Politics
Hannah Richter (University of Hertfordshire, England)
10. Kristeva’s Wager on the Future of Revolt
S. K. Keltner (Kennesaw State University, USA)
11. Strategies of Political Resistance: Agamben and Irigaray
Gavin Rae (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain).
Table of Contents
The Meanings of Violence: Introduction
Gavin Rae and Emma Ingala
Part I: Political Myth and Social Transformation
1. Walter Benjamin and the General Strike: Non-Violence and the Archeon
James Martel (San Francisco State University, USA)
2. Violence, Divine or Otherwise: Myth and Violence in the Benjamin-Schmitt Constellation
Hjalmar Falk (University of Gothenburg, Sweden)
3. Violence and Civilization: Gramsci, Machiavelli, and Sorel
Robert P. Jackson (Manchester Metropolitan University, England)
4. The Violence of Oblivion: Hannah Arendt and the Tragic Loss of Revolutionary Politics
Liesbeth Schoonheim (KU Leuven, Belgium,)
Part II: Sociality and Meaning
5. The World and the Embodied Subject: Humanism, Terror, and Violence
Stephen A. Noble (Universite de Paris X (Paris—Nanterre), France)
6. Dialectics got the Upper Hand: Fanon, Violence, and the Quest[ion] of Liberation
Nigel C. Gibson (Emerson College, USA)
7. Sartre’s Later Work: Towards a Notion of Institutional Violence
Marieke Mueller (King’s College London, England)
8. The Original Polemos: Phenomenology and Violence in Jacques Derrida
Valeria Campos-Salvaterra (Universidad Catolica de Valparaiso, Chile)
Part III: From Subjectivity to Biopolitics
9. Taming the Little Screaming Monster: Castoriadis, Violence, and the Creation of the Individual
Gavin Rae (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain)
10. Judith Butler: From a Formative Violence to an Ethics of Non-Violence
Emma Ingala (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain)
11. Biopolitics and Resistance: The Meaning of Violence in the Work of Giorgio Agamben
German Primera (University of Brighton, England).
Table of Contents
Editor’s Introduction: Between Subjectivity and the Political
Gavin Rae and Emma Ingala
PART I: Political Subjectivities
1. The Limits of Nomos: Hannah Arendt on Law, Politics, and the Polis
Liesbeth Schoonheim (KU Leuven, Belgium)
2. From Hannah Arendt to Judith Butler: The Conditions of the Political
Emma Ingala (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain)
3. Between Failure and Redemption: Emmanuel Levinas on the Political
Gavin Rae (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain)
4. The Significant Nothing: Agamben, Theology, and Political Subjectivity
Piotr Sawczyński (Jagiellonian University, Poland)
5. Aporias of Foreignness: Transnational Encounters through Cinema
Katarzyna Marciniak (Ohio University, USA)
PART II: Political Subjectivities
6. The Abject and the Ugly: Kristeva, Adorno, and the Formation of the Subject
Surti Singh (American University in Cairo, Egypt)
7. Antonio Gramsci: Persons, Subjectivity, and the Political
Robert P. Jackson (Manchester Metropolitan University, England)
8. Embodied Consciousness and Political Subjectivity in the work of Merleau-Ponty
Stephen A. Noble (Université de Paris-Est—Créteil , France)
9. John Stuart Mill and the Liberal Genius
Yoel Mitrani (Sciences Po Paris, France)
10. Hegel’s Ethical Life and Heidegger’s ‘They’: How Political is the Self?
Antonio Gómez Ramos (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain).