Post-Development’s Surrender to Global Capitalism

Abstract

This chapter offers 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 deviant or radical politics, resulting in a surrender to global capitalism. Drawing mainly on the work of Arturo Escobar and James Ferguson, but also of Gustavo Esteva, it valorizes Post-Development's important insights on the production of development discourse and its attendant power mechanisms. By using a Lacanian lens, the chapter also probes Post-Development's failure to address how power is mediated at the level of the subject: in maintaining that (capitalist) development is produced discursively in a cold, impersonal way. Post-Development ignores the fact that such power is able to take hold, expand and, crucially, persist only through unconscious libidinal attachments. This failure leaves Post-Development with few resources to address the structural challenges of global capitalism. Psychoanalytically speaking, such a (Left) position appears to manifest a secret desire that nothing too much must change: Post-Development may well criticize the disciplinary mechanisms of neoliberal development, but ultimately it engages in an unconscious acceptance of capitalism.