In this book, Gavin Rae analyses the foundationsof political life by undertaking a critical comparative analysis of thepolitical theologies of Carl Schmitt and Emmanuel Levinas.
Challenging traditional binary views of sexuality, this book advocates for understanding sexuality as a constellation of identities rather than fixed categories. It critiques the historical privileging of masculine and heteronormative frameworks and explores various theoretical approaches, including psychoanalysis and feminist theory. By employing Walter Benjamin's concept of constellations, the author proposes a new model of sexuality that embraces complexity and fluidity. Gavin Rae, an Associate Professor, brings a rich academic background to this rethinking of sexual identity.
Gavin Rae analyses the history of Western conceptions of evil, showing it to be remarkably complex, differentiated and contested. He traces the problem of evil from early and Medieval Christian philosophy to modern philosophy, German Idealism, post-structuralism and contemporary analytic philosophy and secularisation.
Gavin Rae shows that the problematic status of agency caused by the poststructuralist decentring of the subject is a central concern for poststructuralist thinkers. He shows how this plays out in the thinking of Deleuze, Derrida and Foucault, and find the best explanation of agency for the founded subject in the work of Castoriadis.
Gavin Rae offers an original approach to sovereign violence by looking at a wide range of thinkers, which he organises into three models. Benjamin, Schmitt, Arendt, Deleuze and Guattari form the radical-juridical perspective; Foucault and Agamben the biopolitical; Derrida the bio-juridical which Rae argues produces the most nuanced account.
Privatising Capital examines the historical development of Poland’s public sector and its welfare state. Their infrastructure, services and employees add up to a form of public capital, upon which the vast majority of society is dependent. The book describes the ongoing attempts to financialise and commodify this public capital and examines how this occurs in the areas of health, education and pensions. It also analyses the impact of public capital on the ideas and opinions of the population and how it affects contemporary ideologies and politics in Poland.