Critiquing Sovereign Violence

A unique angle on the topic of sovereignty and violence
Sovereign violence is a dominant issue in contemporary political theory and has attracted much attention from proponents of biopolitics, critical theory, deconstruction and post-structuralism.
Gavin Rae offers an original approach to the topic 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 are biopolitical and Derrida is bio-juridical.
Gavin Rae offers an original approach to the topic by looking at a wide range of thinkers which he organises into three models: the radical-juridical perspective (Benjamin, Schmitt, Arendt, Deleuze and Guattari); biopolitical (Foucault and Agamben); and bio-juridical (Derrida).
Rae engages with new translations of Derrida's late seminars on The Beast and the Sovereign as well as The Death Penalty to show that Derrida offers a radical and alternative angle in which violence is placed between law and life, simultaneously creating and regulating each through the other.
Gavin Rae is Conex Marie Sklodowska-Curie Experienced Research Fellow at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain.