Critiquing Sovereign Violence: Law, Biopolitics, Bio-Juridicalism - Paperback

by Gavin Rae (Author)

Gavin Rae offers an original approach to sovereign violence by looking at a wide range of thinkers, which he organises into three models. Benjamin, Schmitt, Arendt, Deleuze and Guattari form the radical-juridical perspective; Foucault and Agamben the biopolitical; Derrida the bio-juridical - which Rae argues produces the most nuanced account. Rae engages with new translations of 'The Beast and the Sovereign' and 'The Death Penalty' to show that Derrida offers a radical and alternative angle in which violence is placed between law and life, simultaneously creating and regulating each through the other.

Front Jacket

A unique angle on the topic of sovereignty and violence Sovereign violence is a dominant issue in contemporary political theory and has attracted much attention from proponents of biopolitics, critical theory, deconstruction and post-structuralism. Gavin Rae offers an original approach to the topic by looking at a wide range of thinkers which he organises into three models. Benjamin, Schmitt, Arendt, Deleuze and Guattari form the radical-juridical perspective, Foucault and Agamben are biopolitical and Derrida is bio-juridical. Gavin Rae offers an original approach to the topic by looking at a wide range of thinkers which he organises into three models: the radical-juridical perspective (Benjamin, Schmitt, Arendt, Deleuze and Guattari); biopolitical (Foucault and Agamben); and bio-juridical (Derrida). Rae engages with new translations of Derrida's late seminars on The Beast and the Sovereign as well as The Death Penalty to show that Derrida offers a radical and alternative angle in which violence is placed between law and life, simultaneously creating and regulating each through the other. Gavin Rae is Conex Marie Sklodowska-Curie Experienced Research Fellow at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain.

Author Biography

Gavin Rae is Associate Professor in the Department of Logic and Theoretical Philosophy at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain. His research interests lie in nineteenth and twentieth century European philosophy, where he works at the intersection of socio-political philosophy, ontology, and ethics. Besides over fifty published articles and book chapters, he is the author of six monographs, the most recent of which are Poststructuralist Agency (Edinburgh University Press, 2020); Critiquing Sovereign Violence (Edinburgh University Press, 2019); Evil in the Western Philosophical Tradition (Edinburgh University Press, 2019); and the co-editor of six edited collections, the most recent of which are Transformation in Contemporary French Theory, edited with Emma Ingala and Cillian Ó Fathaigh (Edinburgh University Press, forthcoming), Philosophy across Borders, with Cillian Ó Fathaigh (Routledge, forthcoming), and Subjective Agency and Poststructuralism, with Cillian Ó Fathaigh (Routledge, forthcoming). He is currently the Principal Investigator for a major four-year project funded by the Spanish Government titled "The Politics of Reason."