Global Libidinal Economy
Ilan Kapoor, Gavin Fridell, Maureen Sioh, Pieter de Vries
- 208 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
Global Libidinal Economy
Ilan Kapoor, Gavin Fridell, Maureen Sioh, Pieter de Vries
About This Book
This is the first book to examine global political economy from a psychoanalytic perspective. It claims that the libidinalâthe site of unconscious desireâplays 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."