Poststructuralist Agency

Gavin Rae is Associate Professor (accredited to 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).

• IntroductionPart I: Decentring the Subject1. Deleuze, Differential Ontology and Subjectivity2. Derrida’s Différance: Deconstruction and the Sexuality of Subjectivity3. Foucault I: Power and the Subject4. Foucault II: Normativity, Ethics and the SelfPart II: Turning to the Psyche5. Butler on the Subjection of Gendered Agency6. Lacan on the Unconscious Subject: From the Social to the Symbolic7. Kristeva on the Subject of Revolt: The Symbolic and the Semiotic8. Castoriadis, Agency and the Socialised IndividualConclusionBibliography, Index

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.