Global Libidinal Economy

Ilan Kapoor · Gavin Fridell · Maureen Sioh · Pieter de Vries

May 2023 · State University of New York Press

About this ebook

This is the first book to examine global political economy from a psychoanalytic perspective. It claims that the libidinal—the site of unconscious desire—plays not a supplementary or trivial, but a constitutive role in global political economy. Consumption, for example, is not simply a way of satisfying a material or biological need but a doomed attempt at soothing our deeply held sense of loss; and capital is not just a means to material growth and prosperity but is invested with "drive" that seduces, beguiles, and manipulates in the service of unending accumulation. Thus, in contrast to political economy, which assumes a rational subject, libidinal economy is founded on the notion of a desiring subject, who obeys a logic not of good sense or self-interest but profligacy and irrationality. By applying a psychoanalytic lens, Global Libidinal Economy thereby seeks to uncover the unconscious excesses and antagonisms emergent in such key political economy categories as "production," "trade," and "ecology," while also bringing out significant contemporary themes relating to "gender" and "race."

About the author

Ilan Kapoor is Professor of Critical Development Studies at the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change, York University, Toronto. Gavin Fridell is Professor of Global Development Studies at Saint Mary's University, Halifax, Canada. Maureen Sioh is Associate Professor in the Department of Geography at DePaul University, Chicago. Pieter de Vries is presently the International Development Research Liaison for Wageningen University (The Netherlands) and the Universidad de Antioquia (Colombia).