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Critiquing Sovereign ViolenceLaw, Biopolitics, Bio-Juridicalism

By Gavin Rae

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£115.00

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About this book

Criticises the historically dominant classic–juridical model of sovereign violence and defends a bio-juridical model instead
  • Works across the disciplines of critical theory, political theory, biopolitical theory, poststructuralism and deconstruction
  • Develops three models – radical-juridical, biopolitical, and bio-juridical – to understand contemporary debates
  • Situates current thinking in relation to the classic–juridical model, thereby linking contemporary debates to historical ones
  • Moves beyond the dominant biopolitical model to a bio-juridical paradigm

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.

Reviews

Gavin Rae here offers a welcome addition to the philosophical literature on a topic – sovereignty and its relation to violence – that is at the cutting edge of contemporary scholarship in a variety of fields. After carefully articulating several 20th century theorists’ challenges to a law-based model of sovereignty, Rae argues that Derrida’s 'bio-juridical' approach offers an innovative perspective that avoids the problems that he diagnoses in Benjamin, Schmitt, Arendt, Agamben and other theorists.
Table of contents

Preface

Introduction: The Classic-Juridical Model

Part I: The Radical-Juridical Critique

1. Critiquing Violence: Walter Benjamin on Law and the Divine

2. Divinity within the Law: Carl Schmitt on the Violence of Sovereignty

3. Violence and Power: Arendt on the Logic of Totalitarianism

4. Disrupting Sovereignty: Deleuze and Guattari on the War Machine

Part II: The Biopolitical Critique

5. From Law to Life: Foucault, Sovereignty, and Biopolitical Racism

6. Agamben on Sovereignty, Biopolitics, and Civil War

Part III: The Bio-Juridical Critique

7. Life and Law: Derrida on the Bio-Juridicalism of Sovereign Violence

Conclusion

Bibliography; Index

About the author

Gavin Rae

Gavin Rae is 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, psychoanalytic theory, ontology, and ethics. Besides over sixty published articles and book chapters, he is the author of eight monographs, the most recent of which are The Politics of Reason: A Postfoundational Approach (Edinburgh University Press, 2026), Questioning Sexuality: From Psychoanalysis to Gender Theory and Beyond (Edinburgh University Press, 2024), and Poststructuralist Agency: The Subject in Twentieth Century Theory (Edinburgh University Press, 2020). He has also co-edited six volumes, the most recent of which are Subjective Agency and Poststructuralism (Routledge, 2025—with Cillian Ó Fathaigh), Philosophy across Borders (Routledge, 2025—with Emma Ingala), and Historical Traces and Future Pathways of Poststructuralism: Aesthetics, Ethics, Politics (Routledge, 2021—with Emma Ingala).