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Poststructuralist AgencyThe Subject in Twentieth-Century Theory

By Gavin Rae

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£100.00

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About this book

Does the poststructuralist decentring of the foundational subject permit a coherent account of agency?
  • Analyses poststructuralist thinking on 'the subject' in detail, tying it to the often-ignored question of agency
  • Expands the scope of ‘poststructuralism’ beyond Deleuze, Derrida, and Foucault by also engaging with psychoanalytically orientated poststructuralists including Butler, Castoriadis, Kristeva and Lacan
  • Draws out the complicated link between poststructuralism and Lacanian psychoanalysis

Gavin Rae shows that the problematic status of agency caused by the poststructuralist decentring of the subject is a prime concern for poststructuralist thinkers. First, Rae shows how this plays out in the thinking of Deleuze, Derrida and Foucault. He then demonstrates that it is with those poststructuralists associated with and influenced by Lacanian psychoanalysis that this issue most clearly comes to the fore. He goes on to reveal that the conceptual schema of Cornelius Castoriadis best explains how the founded subject is capable of agency.

Reviews

Poststructuralist Agency discusses how poststructuralist subject is not merely a void, offering no subjectivity, no agency and thus no politics but rather offers all of this in a decentered and contingent form. Many books skirt around poststructuralism's positive formulations 　but Gavin Rae’s book does the hard work of showing just how this actually happens.
Table of contents

Introduction

Part I: Decentring the Subject

1. Deleuze, Differential Ontology and Subjectivity

2. Derrida’s Différance: Deconstruction and the Sexuality of Subjectivity

3. Foucault I: Power and the Subject

4. Foucault II: Normativity, Ethics and the Self

Part II: Turning to the Psyche

5. Butler on the Subjection of Gendered Agency

6. Lacan on the Unconscious Subject: From the Social to the Symbolic

7. Kristeva on the Subject of Revolt: The Symbolic and the Semiotic

8. Castoriadis, Agency and the Socialised Individual

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).