Ilan Kapoor
Biographic Data
| ID | 377574 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ilan Kapoor |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ilan |
| FAMILY NAME | Kapoor |
| SIGNATURE | KAPOOR I |
| AFFILIATIONS | York University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5495-5038 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 35 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 338 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 34 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2002 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Tariff nationalism as symptom: The libidinal economy of trade
Why does tariff nationalism keep intensifying even when its economic costs are plain, and why does the protectionist gesture seem to deliver a satisfaction out of all proportion to what it materially achieves? Accounts in international political economy explain the interests and ideas behind the return of protection, but they say less about its emotional and unconscious appeal – about why trade measures widely shown to be self-harming remain poli…
Against Pluriversality: Epistemology, Ideology, and the Disavowal of Capitalist Antagonism
Recent years have witnessed a dramatic surge of interest in decolonial pluriversality across critical geography, political ecology, and development studies. Advanced most prominently by scholars, such as Walter Mignolo and Arturo Escobar, pluriversality promises a world in which multiple ontologies, epistemologies, and lifeways coexist without subordination to Western modernity. Although this project has contributed important critiques of Eurocen…
Entitlement, aspiration, and the spatial politics of exemption
This article argues that entitlement has become a defining affect of contemporary capitalism. While neoliberal capitalism relied on competition, merit, and aspirational envy to legitimate inequality, today's increasingly rentier and monopolistic order is organized around exemption: the presumption, among elites, of a right to enjoy wealth, security, mobility, and environmental protection without reciprocity or justification. Drawing on psychoanal…
Dissociation or disavowal? or, Where's the fetish
Anti-Blackness, Social Death, and Negative Universality
Afro-pessimism poses one of the most profound challenges to contemporary political theory. By conceptualizing Blackness as social death, it argues that anti-Blackness is not a contingent injustice but the ontological ground of modernity. If Blackness names structural non-being, then universality—the category of the Human—appears intrinsically anti-Black. This article engages Afro-pessimism as a serious theoretical interlocutor in order to test th…
Reworking development today: What Drain Theory and Decoloniality lack
Mind the gap: Response to our critics
Extimate nature: Environmental crisis and the Excluded
Drawing on the Lacanian notion of “extimacy,” which denotes that which is both intimate and exterior, this article aims to contribute to the bourgeoning field of psychoanalytic political ecology by emphasizing two extimate features: the instability of—or extimacy in—the socionatural world, rendering impossible notions of natural unity or harmony; and the priority of the Excluded, viewed as symptomatic of—extimate to—the ills of global capitalism:…
Psychoanalytic political ecology
This article outlines a psychoanalytic political ecology that sees both nature and the subject as fundamentally ruptured, rendering it impossible to forge stable human-environmental relationships. It thus stands in opposition to those strands of political ecology (i.e., “environmentalism of the poor” and decolonial “futurality”) that fall back on romanticized notions of reconciliation with nature-culture. Focusing on a case study from the Colombi…
Missing in Action: Where’s the Unconscious in Anti-Racist “Unconscious Bias Training”
This article carries out a psychoanalytic and political critique of recent attempts at fighting racism, focusing on antiracist “unconscious bias training” at universities and in international development. It claims that these regimes of institutional training depend on knowledge- and awareness-based education of university staff and international cooperants, thereby not only negating the significant psychoanalytic dimensions of racism, but also d…
Book forum: Global libidinal economy
This is a forum containing six short interventions on the 2023 co-authored book, Global Libidinal Economy. In the first intervention, the co-authors lay out their book’s key arguments. What follows are four critical commentaries on the book, focusing on the following question: ‘To what extent do you think unconscious excess and irrationality are integral to global political economy?’ Contributors comment from a variety of perspectives–Critical IR…
Of Extensions and Subtractions
Intersectionality, Decoloniality, Indigenous Localism: A Critique
This article claims that, despite their critical-political stances, three current and influential theoretical frameworks - intersectionality, decoloniality, and 'Indigenous localism' - unconsciously accept global capitalism. The article focuses on the work of Crenshaw, Mignolo, Coulthard, and Tuck and Yang, respectively, to argue that, by ascribing to identity politics (intersectionality), a pluriversal politics of authenticity (decoloniality), a…
Decolonising Development Studies
This article explores ways of decolonising Development Studies by: (1) examining the discipline’s tendencies towards what some have called ‘imperial amnesia’, that is, proclivities towards disavowing if not erasing European colonialism, most evident in 1950s–1960s Modernisation theory, but also more recently in the work of such analysts as Bruce Gilley and Nigel Biggar; (2) considering the opportunities and perils of ‘epistemic decolonisation’, t…
Universal Politics
This book claims that there is a negativity at the core of all social articulations that provides the basis for a universal politics. Drawing principally on the work of Slavoj Žižek, the book suggests that the social is punctured by an impossibility—an incompletion—that, rather than serving as a barrier to politics, lays a foundation for shared struggle. The book thus argues for a negative universality, rooted not in a positive element (e.g., ide…
Confronting Desire: Psychoanalysis and International Development
By applying psychoanalytic perspectives to key themes, concepts, and practices underlying the development enterprise, this book offers a new way of analyzing the problems, challenges, and potentialities of international development. The book makes a compelling case for examining development's unconscious desires and in the process inaugurates a new field of study: psychoanalytic development studies. The book analyzes how development's unconscious…
Confronting Desire: Psychoanalysis and International Development
Psychoanalysis and the GlObal
Psychoanalysis and the Global
Cold critique, faint passion, bleak future: Post-Development’s surrender to global capitalism
This article carries out a psychoanalytic critique of Post-Development, arguing that the latter’s inattention to the unconscious underpinnings of power not only leaves it unable to explain why development discourse persists, but also deprives it of a radical politics, resulting in a surrender to global capitalism. Drawing on the work of Escobar, Ferguson and Esteva, the article valorises Post-Development’s important insights on the production of …
Billionaire philanthropy: ‘Decaf Capitalism’
The queer Third World
This article attempts to align ‘queer’ and ‘Third World’ – grouping them in their common inheritance of subjugation and disparagement and their shared allegiance to non-alignment and a politics aimed at disrupting domination and the status quo. In assembling both terms one is struck by how, in the mainstream discourse of international development, the Third World comes off looking remarkably queer: under Western eyes it has often been constructed…
Psychoanalysis and development: Contributions, examples, limits
This article examines the contributions of psychoanalysis to international development, illustrating ways in which thinking and practice in this field are psychoanalytically structured. Drawing on the work of Lacan and Žižek, the article will emphasise three key points: (1) psychoanalysis can help uncover the unconscious of development – its gaps, dislocations, blind spots – thereby elucidating the latter’s contradictory and seemingly ‘irrational…
Psychoanalysis and development: An introduction
International development has tended to ignore – or, tellingly, repress – human/social passions. Yet the theory and practice of development is replete with disavowed memories (racism, (neo)colonial
Celebrity Humanitarianism: The Ideology of Global Charity
In the last two decades especially, we have witnessed the rise of ‘celebrity’ forms of global humanitarianism and charity work, spearheaded by entertainment stars, billionaires, and activist NGOs (e.g. Bob Geldof, Bono, Angelina Jolie, Madonna, Bill Gates, George Soros, Save Darfur, Medeçins Sans Frontières). This book examines this new phenomenon, arguing that celebrity humanitarianism legitimates, and indeed promotes, neoliberal capitalism and …
Participatory development, complicity and desire
This article is an attempt at rethinking participatory development (pd) in terms of empire, undertaking a postcolonial and psychoanalytic reading. Postcolonialism helps point out that our discursive constructions of the Third World say more about us than the Third World; while psychoanalysis helps uncover the desires we invest in the Other. Thus, to the question, ‘why do neo-imperial and inegalitarian relationships pervade pd?’, the article answe…
The devil's in the theory: A critical assessment of Robert Chambers' work on participatory development
The practice orientation of Robert Chambers' work on Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA), which aims at enabling local people and communities to take control over their own development, has received much attention in development circles. This article attempts to shift the emphasis away from PRA's practice towards its theoretical underpinnings. The article argues that PRA's practice/empiricist orientation causes it to be insufficiently theorised a…
Hyper‐self‐reflexive development? Spivak on representing the Third World ‘Other’
This article emphasises the relevance and importance of Gayatri Spivak's work for those of us involved in the field of development (as academics, researchers or development workers). Spivak underlines how our representations, especially of marginalised Third World groups, are intimately linked to our positioning (socioeconomic, gendered, cultural, geographic, historical, institutional). She therefore demands a heightened self‐reflexivity that mai…
Deliberative Democracy or Agonistic Pluralism? The Relevance of the Habermas-Mouffe Debate for Third World Politics
In recent decades, one cannot have failed to notice the spread of Western liberal democracy throughout the world, whether in Eastern Europe or many parts of the Third World. (1) Yet the ascent of liberal democracy has been accompanied by ethnic nationalisms, religious fundamentalisms, civil wars, and genocide. Furthermore, much as in the West, in those developing countries with already well-entrenched liberal democratic regimes, there has been gr…
Capitalism, culture, agency: Dependency versus postcolonial theory
This article reads dependency alongside and against postcolonial theory in an attempt to reinvigorate and re-validate some of the insights of the former while at the same time supporting the latter's current ascendancy in the field of Third World politics. It is argued that although dependency and post-\ncolonial theory share some common territory -- a suspicion of Western liberal modernity, a critical-historical analysis -- they tend to have irr…
Acting in a Tight Spot: Homi Bhabha’s Postcolonial Politics
Homi Bhabha’s writing on postcolonial agency foregrounds discursive subjection, yet retrieves subaltern subterfuge. It reconstructs a critical politics despite and because of hegemonic and orientalist representational systems. And it demonstrates the (im)possibility of a stable subject, but still manages to assert creative and performative agency. The article endeavours to analyse these feats and paradoxes, relying both on Bhabha’s work and on so…
Psychoanalysis and development: Contributions, examples, limits
This article examines the contributions of psychoanalysis to international development, illustrating ways in which thinking and practice in this field are psychoanalytically structured. Drawing on the work of Lacan and Žižek, the article will emphasise three key points: (1) psychoanalysis can help uncover the unconscious of development – its gaps, dislocations, blind spots – thereby elucidating the latter’s contradictory and seemingly ‘irrational…
Deliberative democracy and the WTO
Habermas's rules-based deliberative democratic perspective underscores issues of power, legitimacy and justice. The article deploys this perspective to reveal how the lack of legitimating procedures and rational deliberation at the World Trade Organization (WTO) yields power politics and unjust outcomes. It examines the rule-making process in the successive trade Rounds that led up to the WTO, as well as the politics of the organisation's rule-ap…
Celebrity Humanitarianism: The Ideology of Global Charity
In the last two decades especially, we have witnessed the rise of ‘celebrity’ forms of global humanitarianism and charity work, spearheaded by entertainment stars, billionaires, and activist NGOs (e.g. Bob Geldof, Bono, Angelina Jolie, Madonna, Bill Gates, George Soros, Save Darfur, Medeçins Sans Frontières). This book examines this new phenomenon, arguing that celebrity humanitarianism legitimates, and indeed promotes, neoliberal capitalism and …
Cold critique, faint passion, bleak future: Post-Development’s surrender to global capitalism
This article carries out a psychoanalytic critique of Post-Development, arguing that the latter’s inattention to the unconscious underpinnings of power not only leaves it unable to explain why development discourse persists, but also deprives it of a radical politics, resulting in a surrender to global capitalism. Drawing on the work of Escobar, Ferguson and Esteva, the article valorises Post-Development’s important insights on the production of …
Intersectionality, Decoloniality, Indigenous Localism: A Critique
This article claims that, despite their critical-political stances, three current and influential theoretical frameworks - intersectionality, decoloniality, and 'Indigenous localism' - unconsciously accept global capitalism. The article focuses on the work of Crenshaw, Mignolo, Coulthard, and Tuck and Yang, respectively, to argue that, by ascribing to identity politics (intersectionality), a pluriversal politics of authenticity (decoloniality), a…
Psychoanalysis and development: An introduction
International development has tended to ignore – or, tellingly, repress – human/social passions. Yet the theory and practice of development is replete with disavowed memories (racism, (neo)colonial
The queer Third World
This article attempts to align ‘queer’ and ‘Third World’ – grouping them in their common inheritance of subjugation and disparagement and their shared allegiance to non-alignment and a politics aimed at disrupting domination and the status quo. In assembling both terms one is struck by how, in the mainstream discourse of international development, the Third World comes off looking remarkably queer: under Western eyes it has often been constructed…
Decolonising Development Studies
This article explores ways of decolonising Development Studies by: (1) examining the discipline’s tendencies towards what some have called ‘imperial amnesia’, that is, proclivities towards disavowing if not erasing European colonialism, most evident in 1950s–1960s Modernisation theory, but also more recently in the work of such analysts as Bruce Gilley and Nigel Biggar; (2) considering the opportunities and perils of ‘epistemic decolonisation’, t…
Extimate nature: Environmental crisis and the Excluded
Drawing on the Lacanian notion of “extimacy,” which denotes that which is both intimate and exterior, this article aims to contribute to the bourgeoning field of psychoanalytic political ecology by emphasizing two extimate features: the instability of—or extimacy in—the socionatural world, rendering impossible notions of natural unity or harmony; and the priority of the Excluded, viewed as symptomatic of—extimate to—the ills of global capitalism:…
Deliberative Democracy or Agonistic Pluralism? The Relevance of the Habermas-Mouffe Debate for Third World Politics
In recent decades, one cannot have failed to notice the spread of Western liberal democracy throughout the world, whether in Eastern Europe or many parts of the Third World. (1) Yet the ascent of liberal democracy has been accompanied by ethnic nationalisms, religious fundamentalisms, civil wars, and genocide. Furthermore, much as in the West, in those developing countries with already well-entrenched liberal democratic regimes, there has been gr…
Capitalism, culture, agency: Dependency versus postcolonial theory
This article reads dependency alongside and against postcolonial theory in an attempt to reinvigorate and re-validate some of the insights of the former while at the same time supporting the latter's current ascendancy in the field of Third World politics. It is argued that although dependency and post-\ncolonial theory share some common territory -- a suspicion of Western liberal modernity, a critical-historical analysis -- they tend to have irr…
The devil's in the theory: A critical assessment of Robert Chambers' work on participatory development
The practice orientation of Robert Chambers' work on Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA), which aims at enabling local people and communities to take control over their own development, has received much attention in development circles. This article attempts to shift the emphasis away from PRA's practice towards its theoretical underpinnings. The article argues that PRA's practice/empiricist orientation causes it to be insufficiently theorised a…
Acting in a Tight Spot: Homi Bhabha’s Postcolonial Politics
Homi Bhabha’s writing on postcolonial agency foregrounds discursive subjection, yet retrieves subaltern subterfuge. It reconstructs a critical politics despite and because of hegemonic and orientalist representational systems. And it demonstrates the (im)possibility of a stable subject, but still manages to assert creative and performative agency. The article endeavours to analyse these feats and paradoxes, relying both on Bhabha’s work and on so…
Concluding Remarks: The Power of Participation
I reflect on the preceding five contributions in this issue by focusing on the power dimensions of participation. I emphasize how power underlies and frames not only the activities and management of participatory development, but also our own personal/institutional involvement as development researchers and workers. I end with some thoughts on where these inescapable power dynamics leave our engagement with participatory development.
Deliberative democracy and the WTO
Habermas's rules-based deliberative democratic perspective underscores issues of power, legitimacy and justice. The article deploys this perspective to reveal how the lack of legitimating procedures and rational deliberation at the World Trade Organization (WTO) yields power politics and unjust outcomes. It examines the rule-making process in the successive trade Rounds that led up to the WTO, as well as the politics of the organisation's rule-ap…
Hyper‐self‐reflexive development? Spivak on representing the Third World ‘Other’
This article emphasises the relevance and importance of Gayatri Spivak's work for those of us involved in the field of development (as academics, researchers or development workers). Spivak underlines how our representations, especially of marginalised Third World groups, are intimately linked to our positioning (socioeconomic, gendered, cultural, geographic, historical, institutional). She therefore demands a heightened self‐reflexivity that mai…
Participatory development, complicity and desire
This article is an attempt at rethinking participatory development (pd) in terms of empire, undertaking a postcolonial and psychoanalytic reading. Postcolonialism helps point out that our discursive constructions of the Third World say more about us than the Third World; while psychoanalysis helps uncover the desires we invest in the Other. Thus, to the question, ‘why do neo-imperial and inegalitarian relationships pervade pd?’, the article answe…
The Postcolonial Politics of Development
This book uses a postcolonial lens to question development’s dominant cultural representations and institutional practices, investigating the possibilities for a transformatory postcolonial politics. Ilan Kapoor examines recent development policy initiatives in such areas as ‘governance,’ ‘human rights’ and ‘participation’ to better understand and contest the production of knowledge in development - its cultural assumptions, power implications, a…
The Postcolonial Politics of Development
This book uses a postcolonial lens to question development’s dominant cultural representations and institutional practices, investigating the possibilities for a transformatory postcolonial politics. Ilan Kapoor examines recent development policy initiatives in such areas as ‘governance,’ ‘human rights’ and ‘participation’ to better understand and contest the production of knowledge in development - its cultural assumptions, power implications, a…
Celebrity Humanitarianism: The Ideology of Global Charity
In the last two decades especially, we have witnessed the rise of ‘celebrity’ forms of global humanitarianism and charity work, spearheaded by entertainment stars, billionaires, and activist NGOs (e.g. Bob Geldof, Bono, Angelina Jolie, Madonna, Bill Gates, George Soros, Save Darfur, Medeçins Sans Frontières). This book examines this new phenomenon, arguing that celebrity humanitarianism legitimates, and indeed promotes, neoliberal capitalism and …
Psychoanalysis and development: Contributions, examples, limits
This article examines the contributions of psychoanalysis to international development, illustrating ways in which thinking and practice in this field are psychoanalytically structured. Drawing on the work of Lacan and Žižek, the article will emphasise three key points: (1) psychoanalysis can help uncover the unconscious of development – its gaps, dislocations, blind spots – thereby elucidating the latter’s contradictory and seemingly ‘irrational…
Psychoanalysis and development: An introduction
International development has tended to ignore – or, tellingly, repress – human/social passions. Yet the theory and practice of development is replete with disavowed memories (racism, (neo)colonial
The queer Third World
This article attempts to align ‘queer’ and ‘Third World’ – grouping them in their common inheritance of subjugation and disparagement and their shared allegiance to non-alignment and a politics aimed at disrupting domination and the status quo. In assembling both terms one is struck by how, in the mainstream discourse of international development, the Third World comes off looking remarkably queer: under Western eyes it has often been constructed…
Billionaire philanthropy: ‘Decaf Capitalism’
Cold critique, faint passion, bleak future: Post-Development’s surrender to global capitalism
This article carries out a psychoanalytic critique of Post-Development, arguing that the latter’s inattention to the unconscious underpinnings of power not only leaves it unable to explain why development discourse persists, but also deprives it of a radical politics, resulting in a surrender to global capitalism. Drawing on the work of Escobar, Ferguson and Esteva, the article valorises Post-Development’s important insights on the production of …
Psychoanalysis and the GlObal
Psychoanalysis and the Global
Confronting Desire: Psychoanalysis and International Development
By applying psychoanalytic perspectives to key themes, concepts, and practices underlying the development enterprise, this book offers a new way of analyzing the problems, challenges, and potentialities of international development. The book makes a compelling case for examining development's unconscious desires and in the process inaugurates a new field of study: psychoanalytic development studies. The book analyzes how development's unconscious…
Confronting Desire: Psychoanalysis and International Development
Universal Politics
This book claims that there is a negativity at the core of all social articulations that provides the basis for a universal politics. Drawing principally on the work of Slavoj Žižek, the book suggests that the social is punctured by an impossibility—an incompletion—that, rather than serving as a barrier to politics, lays a foundation for shared struggle. The book thus argues for a negative universality, rooted not in a positive element (e.g., ide…
Decolonising Development Studies
This article explores ways of decolonising Development Studies by: (1) examining the discipline’s tendencies towards what some have called ‘imperial amnesia’, that is, proclivities towards disavowing if not erasing European colonialism, most evident in 1950s–1960s Modernisation theory, but also more recently in the work of such analysts as Bruce Gilley and Nigel Biggar; (2) considering the opportunities and perils of ‘epistemic decolonisation’, t…
Missing in Action: Where’s the Unconscious in Anti-Racist “Unconscious Bias Training”
This article carries out a psychoanalytic and political critique of recent attempts at fighting racism, focusing on antiracist “unconscious bias training” at universities and in international development. It claims that these regimes of institutional training depend on knowledge- and awareness-based education of university staff and international cooperants, thereby not only negating the significant psychoanalytic dimensions of racism, but also d…
Book forum: Global libidinal economy
This is a forum containing six short interventions on the 2023 co-authored book, Global Libidinal Economy. In the first intervention, the co-authors lay out their book’s key arguments. What follows are four critical commentaries on the book, focusing on the following question: ‘To what extent do you think unconscious excess and irrationality are integral to global political economy?’ Contributors comment from a variety of perspectives–Critical IR…
Of Extensions and Subtractions
Political science (23 works) · Politics (23 works) · Sociology (21 works) · Law (20 works) · Law (13 works) · Epistemology (12 works) · Philosophy (12 works) · Philosophy (11 works) · Gender Studies (10 works) · Psychology (9 works)