Ilan Kapoor Participatory Development, Complicity and Desire Seminario Línea II Ma Antropología Alexandra Urán C.

Theoretical appraoches Extending the criticisms of Participatory Development –PD- through a postcolonial and psychoanalytical reading of PD Postcocolonial critique: discursive constructions of the Third World (the ‘Other’) say more about ‘us’ than the Third World Psychoanalysis: how do we invest our desires in the ‘Other’?

Slavoj Zizek Distinction between the Real (of contradiction) and reality (as a harmonious construction of everyday life). The Real stands for the ‘impossibility of wholeness’ of ‘harmonious society) How do we relate then to reality? Through the construction of fantasies (fantasy is the ‘support that gives consistency to what we call ‘reality’) Psychoanalysis concerned with tracking the inconsistencies, slips, disavowals and contradictions that disrupt our fantasies (i.e. ‘interventions of the Real’)

Slavoj Zizek 2 Ideology then is not a mask or a veil covering the ‘real’ situation, a reality behind a reality, it is rather reality itself that is already ‘ideological’. Ideology is externalised and materialised: it is built into our socio-political practices and institutions How then to read our desires? (e.g. the desire of empowering ‘the Other’?) How are our desires traversed/affected by all sorts of complicities?

Tracking complicity and desire Narcissistic samaritanism. There is a pleasure desire in PD; that of benevolence, self-effacing magnanimity (e.g. ‘handing over the stick’, learning from the poor’, etc.) PD is not so much centred on the ‘Other’ but on the I (the self of the ‘new professional) Ideology as a lie that pretends to be taken seriously

Transference Psychical transference as the displacement of unresolved conflicts onto a substitute object (the perceived inadequacies of our own liberal democratic political systems) Thus when it comes t PD we ask more of marginalised Third World communities than of ourselves. ‘We manage the process they do the participation’

The fantasy of consensus PD is taken to be not prescriptive but reflective of community interests (but what is community? Does ‘it’ have interests? The disavowal of conflict, contradictions, etc. is the quintessential ideological attitude (racism, class,patriarcy, inequality) The search for closure

Complicity and desire institutionalised The packaging and branding of participatory development (e.g. Starbucks and community; Benetton and multicultural diversity) Panopticism (the self-policing of Third World people vis-a-vis external agencies), the ‘monitoring of monitoring’ Conditionality: PD becomes a condition for development assistance

Implications 1. The disavowal of complicity and desire is a technology of power 2. PD is a vehicle for various types of empire building 3. PD perpetuates the treatment of the Third World as object and resource

Conclusions PD is not bad, but it is dangerous What to do? 1. Publicizing complicity and desire 2. Extending participation to the economy 3. Linking up with democratic politics 4. Hijacking participatory development