The Politics of Reason - by Gavin Rae (Hardcover)

About the Book

Offers a reconfiguration of political reason from the perspective of the social performativity inherent in postfoundational theory.

Book Synopsis

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.

Review Quotes

Writing with elegance and erudition, Rae provides a searching, novel and far-reaching analysis of our post-foundational predicament. Drawing on both the analytic and continental traditions, as well as psychoanalysis, this book remaps reason and unreason in service of a creative, collective vision of the political and its epistemology.--Sacha Golob, King's College London