Questioning Sexuality

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).

• PrefaceIntroduction: The Problem of Sex(uality)Part I: Psychoanalysis and Phenomenology1. Freud on Sexuality and the Feminine2. Heidegger, Fundamental Ontology, and Sexuality3. Merleau-Ponty on the Sexed BodyPart II: Feminism and (Post)structuralism4. Beauvoir on the Question of "Woman"5. Lacan, the Symbolic Phallus, and Sexual Difference6. Irigaray on Sexual Difference: Jamming the Patriarchal MachinePart II: Gender Theory and Queer Materialities7. Butler and Performativity: Thinking Sex through Gender 8. Barad, Agential Realism, and Queer TheoryConclusion: Sexuality as ConstellationBibliographyIndex

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.