Rethinking Development Politics

Rethinking Political Science and International Studies series

教授伊兰卡普尔斯图至关重要的发展dies, Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change, York University, Toronto and Gavin Fridell, Professor of Global Development Studies, Faculty of Arts, Saint Mary's University, Halifax, Canada

In this innovative book, Ilan Kapoor and Gavin Fridell rethink development politics psychoanalytically, investigating its unconscious. Whereas mainstream development politics is organized around stability and rationality, psychoanalysis points to disharmony and irrationality, helping to explain the development subject’s often self-defeating behaviour.

‘This is a truly brave and thought-provoking book, written from a perspective that is too often rejected apriori by dismissive minds. Framed in an accessible language, it highlights the gaps and unconscious enjoyments of both mainstream and critical development. Importantly, it proposes routes ahead in which the unconscious constitutes not only a stumbling block, but also a political resource.’
– Maria Eriksson Baaz, Uppsala University, Sweden

‘Ilan Kapoor and Gavin Fridell confront the invisible but active unconscious in development politics and they deliver not just a “rethinking” of issues but an “unthinking” development politics - as they critique modernization, Marxist political economy, postdevelopment and decoloniality. Theirs is a refreshing take predicated on critical psychoanalysis, which explodes the seductive ideologies of development.’
– Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, University of Bayreuth, Germany