SearchMy accountHelpBasket0 items

Questioning SexualityFrom Psychoanalysis to Gender Theory and Beyond

By Gavin Rae

Format

£105.00

In stock

About this book

Argues for a rethinking of sexuality as a constellation, rather than substantive identity
  • Identifies the dominant historical approach to sexuality in Western philosophy
  • Undertakes a detailed analysis of the various ways in which psychoanalytic, phenomenological, and feminist and gender theory and new materialisms have criticised the historically dominant model
  • Looks to the early thought of Walter Benjamin to develop a new interpretation of sexuality as constellation

Western thinking on sexuality has historically affirmed not only a binary division between two sexes, each of which is defined by unique fixed attributes that delineate its essence, but also 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 rethinks the problematic by turning to Walter Benjamin’s notion of concepts as constellations to develop an alternative model called sexuality as constellation.

Reviews

An innovative, refreshingly nuanced interdisciplinary consideration of sexuality’s philosophical chronicling. Rae’s Questioning Sexuality deftly weaves and delimits psychoanalytic, phenomenological, feminist, and queer approaches to entrenched notions of sexuality, brilliantly reframing sexuality as an indeterminate conceptual nexus illuminating the complexity of identity, politics, ethics, and being itself.
Table of contents

Preface

Introduction: The Problem of Sex(uality)

Part I: Psychoanalysis and Phenomenology

1. Freud on Sexuality and the Feminine

2. Heidegger, Fundamental Ontology, and Sexuality

3. Merleau-Ponty on the Sexed Body

Part II: Feminism and (Post)structuralism

4. Beauvoir on the Question of "Woman"

5. Lacan, the Symbolic Phallus, and Sexual Difference

6. Irigaray on Sexual Difference: Jamming the Patriarchal Machine

Part II: Gender Theory and Queer Materialities

7. Butler and Performativity: Thinking Sex through Gender

8. Barad, Agential Realism, and Queer Theory

Conclusion: Sexuality as Constellation

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).