Table Of ContentHistorical Traces and Future
Pathways of Poststructuralism
This volume brings together an international array of scholars to
reconsider the meaning and place of poststructuralism historically and
demonstrate some of the ways in which it continues to be relevant,
especially for debates in aesthetics, ethics, and politics.
The book’s chapters focus on the works of Butler, Deleuze, Derrida,
Foucault, Irigaray, Kristeva, Lacan, and Lyotard—in combination with
those of Agamben, Bartes, Luhman, and Nietzsche—and examine issues in-
cluding biopolitics, culture, embodiment, epistemology, history, music, tem-
porality, political resistance, psychoanalysis, revolt, and the visual arts. The
contributors use poststructuralism as a hermeneutical strategy that rejects
the traditional affirmation of unity, totality, transparency, and representa-
tion to instead focus on the foundational importance of open-ended becom-
ing, difference, the unknowable, and expression. This approach allows for a
more expansive definition of poststructuralism and helps demonstrate how
it has contributed to debates across philosophy and other disciplines.
Historical Traces and Future Pathways of Poststructuralism will be of
particular interest to researchers in philosophy, politics, political theory,
critical theory, aesthetics, feminist theory, cultural studies, intellectual
history, psychoanalysis, and sociology.
Gavin Rae is Associate Professor in the Department of Logic and Theo-
retical Philosophy at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain. He
is the author of six monographs, the most recent of which are Poststruc-
turalist Agency (2020); Critiquing Sovereign Violence (2019); and Evil in
the Western Philosophical Tradition (2019), published by Edinburgh Uni-
versity Press; and the co-editor (with Emma Ingala) of The Meanings of
Violence: From Critical Theory to Biopolitics (2019) and Subjectivity and
the Political: Contemporary Perspectives (2018), published by Routledge.
Emma Ingala is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Logic and Theoretical
Philosophy at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM), Spain. She
specializes in poststructuralist thought, political anthropology, feminism,
and psychoanalysis, and is the co-editor (with Gavin Rae) of The Mean-
ings of Violence: From Critical Theory to Biopolitics (2019) and Subjec-
tivity and the Political: Contemporary Perspectives (2018), both published
by Routledge.
Taylor & Francis
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Historical Traces and Future
Pathways of Poststructuralism
Aesthetics, Ethics, Politics
Edited by
Gavin Rae and Emma Ingala
First published 2021
by Routledge
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Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction 1
GAVIN RAE AND EMMA INGALA
PART I
Historical Traces 13
1 Nietzsche and the Emergence of Poststructuralism 15
ALAN D. SCHRIFT
2 Poststructuralism in America: From Epistemological
Relativism to Post- Truth? 35
KEVIN KENNEDY
3 From Choirboy to Funeral Orator: Foucault’s
Complicated Relationship to Structuralism 53
GUILEL TREIBER
4 Haunted by Derrida: Reading Benjamin’s ‘Critique of
Violence’ and Derrida’s ‘Force of Law’ in Constellation 77
JAMES R. MARTEL
PART II
Future Pathways: Aesthetics 97
5 A Poststructuralism for the Visual Arts 99
ASHLEY WOODWARD
vi Contents
6 What Moves Music?: Poststructuralism, Pulsion,
and Musical Ontology 119
MICHAEL DAVID SZÉKELY
PART III
Ethical Openings 141
7 Not Just a Body: Lacan on Corporeality 143
EMMA INGALA
8 The Ethics and Politics of Temporality: Judith Butler,
Embodiment, and Narrativity 160
ROSINE KELZ
PART IV
Political Apertures 181
9 Re- thinking Poststructuralism with Deleuze and
Luhmann: Autopoiesis, Immanence, Politics 183
HANNAH RICHTER
10 Kristeva’s Wager on the Future of Revolt 204
S. K. KELTNER
11 Strategies of Political Resistance: Agamben and Irigaray 223
GAVIN RAE
Notes on Contributors 247
Bibliography 251
Index 277
Acknowledgments
The production of an edited collection, more so than any other
publication, is the consequence of extensive collective effort. This
obviously involves the authors included, but also extends to others. To
this end, the editors would like to thank all those who participated in
the international conference ‘Poststructuralism: Past, Present, Future,’
held in March 2019 at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM),
Spain, at which a number of the chapters included here—albeit in ear-
lier, much reduced form—were first presented. We would also like to
thank the Department of Logic and Theoretical Philosophy at UCM
for its willingness to host the event. At Routledge, we once again thank
our editor, Andrew Weckenmann, and his assistant, Alexandra Sim-
mons, for their support and professionalism throughout the process,
and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. Finally, this
volume forms part of the activities for the following research projects:
(1) ‘Human Nature and Community IV’ (FFI2017–83155-P), funded
by the Spanish Ministry for Economy, Industry, and Competitiveness;
and (2) ‘Sovereignty and Law: Between Ethics and Politics,’ co-funded
by the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, the European Union’s Sev-
enth Framework Program for Research, Technological Development and
Demonstration under Grant Agreement 600371, The Spanish Ministry
of the Economy and Competitivity (COFUND2013–40258), The Span-
ish Ministry for Education, Culture, and Sport (CEI–15–17), and Banco
Santander. More information about this research project can be found
at: https:// sovereigntyandlaw.wordpress.com/.
Taylor & Francis
Taylor & Francis Group
http://taylorandfrancis.com
Introduction
Gavin Rae and Emma Ingala
In the 1960s, French academic discourse witnessed an avalanche of
theoretical innovations that fundamentally altered the parameters
of Western philosophy. Texts including Michel Foucault’s The Order
of Things1 (from 1966), Jacques Derrida’s Of Grammatology,2 Voice
and Phenomenon,3 and Writing and Difference,4 published in 1967, and
Gilles Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition5 (published in 1968) exhib-
ited and brought to the fore something of this spirit when they challenged
the then dominant structuralist paradigm. Although not proposing a
common program or, indeed, offering a homogeneous p osition, these
authors undertook something of an internal critique of the premises
of Saussurean and Levi- Straussian-i nspired structuralism to, on the
one hand, accept aspects of the structuralist approach— namely, but
not e xclusively, its critique of the foundational Cartesian rational sub-
ject and the onto-g enetic importance given to differential structural
relations— all the while, on the other hand, criticizing its implicit depen-
dence on differential relational symmetry, closure, and ahistoricity. The
result was a philosophical approach that challenged not only aspects of
the structuralist paradigm, but also the fundamental importance tradi-
tionally given to substance, identity, closure, and totality, as a precur-
sor to affirming the originary status of difference, asymmetry, aporias,
and open-e nded becoming. Although there is substantial debate over its
relationship to ‘structuralism,’ these alterations gave rise, especially in
Anglo-A merican academia, to the notion of ‘poststructuralism.’6
This term is, however, somewhat problematic, not only because
a number of those to whom the label has been attributed have raised
doubts about it,7 but also because it contains an inherent ambiguity,
insofar as it is unclear whether ‘poststructuralism’ should be understood
in a weak sense to delineate any theoretical position that comes tempo-
rally after ‘structuralism’ or in a strong conceptual sense as identify-
ing a particular ‘school’ of thought with an agreed upon philosophical
program. The problem with the weak version is that it is simply too
indeterminate, whereas the latter is questionable because it is not clear
that the heterogeneous positions of the various thinkers it is supposed to
describe can actually be reduced to a single, common perspective.
