Politics of Reason
Regular price
€112.99
A01=Gavin Rae
Author_Gavin Rae
Carl Schmitt
Category=JBCC9
Category=QDTQ
Category=QDTS
critical theory
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_new_release
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Ernesto Laclau
Hegemony
Judith Butler
Max Horkheimer
Michel Foucault
Performativity
political philosophy
Postfoundationalism
Poststructuralism
psychoanalytic theory
reason
Sigmund Freud
Theodor W. Adorno
Product details
- ISBN 9781399552561
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 31 Mar 2026
- Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
While Western political theory has traditionally affirmed the importance of pure reason, this has recently come under attack from a variety of directions, including from those who question its universal pretensions, its neglect of the emotions, and its attachment to rationally discerned truth.
Gavin Rae accepts aspects of these critiques, but rejects the conclusion that this means that reason should be abandoned politically. Instead, Rae argues that it opens the possibility for a rethinking and recuperation of a reconceived understanding of political reason that emphasises, not individual abstract reflection, but social performativity. Through engagements with analytic epistemology, critical theory, feminism, hegemony theory, poststructuralism, and psychoanalysis, political reason is reconceived as an ongoing collective performative practice that aims at establishing the hegemonic norms that will structure and define collective identity, including its political and epistemic possibilities.
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).
