Critiquing Sovereign Violence

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).

• PrefaceIntroduction: The Classic-Juridical ModelPart I: The Radical-Juridical Critique1. Critiquing Violence: Walter Benjamin on Law and the Divine 2. Divinity within the Law: Carl Schmitt on the Violence of Sovereignty3. Violence and Power: Arendt on the Logic of Totalitarianism4. Disrupting Sovereignty: Deleuze and Guattari on the War MachinePart II: The Biopolitical Critique5. From Law to Life: Foucault, Sovereignty, and Biopolitical Racism6. Agamben on Sovereignty, Biopolitics, and Civil WarPart III: The Bio-Juridical Critique7. Life and Law: Derrida on the Bio-Juridicalism of Sovereign ViolenceConclusionBibliography; Index

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.