Gavin Rae - Subjectivity and the Political: Contemporary Perspectives

This book offers an exciting new take on questions of the political and the subject, and the intersection at which they reciprocally constitute each other. It goes beyond the established post-structuralist and deconstructionist approaches that have dominated past discussions, holding together an array of heterogeneous perspectives and maintaining the contest among them. With contributions ranging across modern and contemporary political theory, political theology, political psychology, and more, this collection will speak to students from across humanities and social science disciplines where the question of the subject-political relation remains central.

Nathan Widder, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK

Despite 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. Thinkers addressed include Adorno, Agamben, Arendt, Butler, Derrida, Gramsci, Hegel, Heidegger, Kristeva, Levinas, Merleau-Ponty, and Mill, 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 abjection, genius, redemption, and ugliness. These original essays will be of interest to researchers in Philosophy, Politics, Political Theory, Critical Theory, Cultural Studies, History of Ideas, Psychology, and Sociology.

Gavin Rae is Conex Marie Skodowska-Curie Experienced Research Fellow at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain. He is the author of Realizing Freedom: Hegel, Sartre, and the Alienation of Human Being (Palgrave Macmillan: 2011), Ontology in Heidegger and Deleuze (Palgrave Macmillan: 2014), and The Problem of Political Foundations in Carl Schmitt and Emmanuel Levinas (Palgrave Macmillan: 2016).

Emma Ingala is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Theoretical Philosophy and Vice-Dean of Academic Organization in the Faculty of Philosophy at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain. She specializes in post-structuralist thought, political anthropology, and psychoanalysis.

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Contemporary Perspectives

Edited by Gavin Rae and Emma Ingala

Edited by Gavin Rae and Emma Ingala

First published 2018

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ISBN: 978-1-138-29164-5 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-315-26516-2 (ebk)

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