Ebook: Poststructuralist Agency: The Subject in Twentieth-Century Theory

Does the poststructuralist decentring of the foundational subject permit a coherent account of agency?

• Analyses poststructuralist thinking on 'the subject' in detail, tying it to the often-ignored question of agency
• Expands the scope of ‘poststructuralism’ beyond Deleuze, Derrida, and Foucault by also engaging with psychoanalytically orientated poststructuralists including Butler, Castoriadis, Kristeva and Lacan
• Draws out the complicated link between poststructuralism and Lacanian psychoanalysis

Gavin Rae shows that the problematic status of agency caused by the poststructuralist decentring of the subject is a prime concern for poststructuralist thinkers. First, Rae shows how this plays out in the thinking of Deleuze, Derrida and Foucault. He then demonstrates that it is with those poststructuralists associated with and influenced by Lacanian psychoanalysis that this issue most clearly comes to the fore. He goes on to reveal that the conceptual schema of Cornelius Castoriadis best explains how the founded subject is capable of agency.