2025/01/02 by Ilan Kapoor, Gavin Fridell · 3 citations
Arts and Humanities · Engineering · Social Sciences · #African history and culture studies #Decoloniality #Development (topology) #Engineering #Engineering ethics #Epistemology #Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics #Law #Philosophy #Political science #Sociology #South African History and Culture
paper · pdf · doi:10.1080/02255189.2024.2406202
published in Canadian Journal of Development Studies/Revue canadienne d études du développement 46(1), 1-19 (Taylor & Francis)
crossref issued 2025/01/02 · crossref published 2025/01/02 · crossref published-print 2025/01/02 · openalex publication_date 2025/01/02 · crossref published-online 2025/03/10 · crossref created 2025/03/10 · crossref deposited 2025/03/10 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06 · crossref indexed 2026/08/06
This article builds on the burgeoning field of Psychoanalytic Development Studies to argue for the need to dwell on the realm of unconscious desire to explain people’s obstinate attraction to capitalist modernity today, despite critique. It focuses on two significant contemporary critical standpoints in development: Neomarxist ‘Drain Theory’, which exposes new mechanisms of imperialism resulting from the unevenness of globalized production; and Decoloniality, which illuminates continuing patterns of Western coloniality, advocating instead for a delinking from them through a pluriversal localist politics. The article claims that, in spite of their valuable critiques, both standpoints lack insight into unconscious desire, the former selling short the fetishism endemic to capitalism, the latter fetishizing questions of authenticity that end up reproducing, rather than withdrawing from, capitalist modernity. The article concludes by outlining psychoanalytic options for a transformatory politics.