The alt can’t change capitalist desires—it matters if they don’t solve their impacts.

The editor is a Professor of Environmental Studies but the material edited consists of articles by scholars who have analysed every subject in the book according to the theories of Jacques Lacan a pre-eminent psychoanalyst whose controversial contributions appear to be inexplicably influential. There are twelve essays on subjects varying from capitalism to culture and from empowering women to architecture. All the authors have attempted to look at their themes from a Lacanian standpoint. For a lay reader who succeeds in reading all the contributions to this book, it would still be obscure as to what purpose the Lacanian psychoanalytic approach would serve particularly in policy formulation by governments or in corporate behaviour toward individuals and society.

The book is not easy to read; the language of psychology and philosophy has been used to describe even common ideas. In his introduction Kapoor has stated ‘this book is about the hole at the heart of the glObal; it deploys psycho analysis to expose the unconscious desires, excesses and antagonisms that accompany the world of economic flows, cultural circulation, and sociopolitical change . . . . . . .the point here is to uncover what Jacques Lacan calls the Real of the global – its rifts, gaps, exceptions and contradictions.’(p ix)

What is that hole in the global does not come out clearly, since Lacan’s idea of ‘the real’ is impossible to define. But one may infer that it is the reality behind the façade of everything that globalisation sought to achieve, the eradication of poverty and the spread of prosperity through liberalism in both politics and economics. Globalisation only led to long term financial crisis, the spread of gross inequality in incomes and aggressive financial capitalism degenerating into a new kind of imperialism. Although all this happened in small or big measure the fact remains that millions of poor also came out of abject poverty. No author has attempted a solution to fill that hole. The world has seen imperialism, fascism and finally liberalism and now with the rise of Trumpism in the USA, Brexit, Mr. Xi becoming almost a life time president of China and the rise of religiously oriented government in India, no one knows whether the world has bid goodbye to all that liberalism stood for. Is Lacan’s idea of the true nature of man – the real – now coming to the fore? If so, is Lacan right? This compilation has sought to give some answers analysing the subconscious of the individuals who constitute the society.

A general reader has to plod through the articles to understand what exactly the authors want to convey. Their overall position appears to be that most of the ills we see in capitalism or its connected areas come from the underlying desire to accumulate even without purpose as the urge is so strong in every individual in a Lacanian sense of the Real which itself cannot be defined very clearly. What is meant, it seems, is that the real is a part of nature from which human beings have severed themselves by language but to which they try to get back again and again.

So unless a person is able to destroy this desire to continue the existing order of things that gives enjoyment but which is leading humanity into a stage of inevitable environmental collapse, by focusing on alternatives that are more human and beneficial to all, this desire will persist inexorably to a collapse. That is the strength of capitalism. Despite the knowledge, that it creates extremes in income distribution, affects the environment resulting in permanent damage to the earth and also the happiness of the future generations, it continues tenaciously.

Even while the current generation witnesses its ravages on society the desires that lie in the subconscious of individuals impel them to continue with the capitalist policies that are taking them to disaster. This is reflected in the financial crisis, in the way environmental damage is faced, in architecture, in the treatment of women, and in the move toward urbanisation across the globe.

None of the authors has attempted to clarify whether such an esoteric analysis, a paradigm change in the way in which ordinary mortals look at these happenings in the world, has any relevance to policy makers who can use them for changes in the way laws are framed, or institutions are governed, to make alterations in the subconscious of the people to change their desires, so as to fall in conformity with the overall welfare of mankind now and in the future. This does seem to be more than a small oversight.

Ordinarily understood psychoanalysis is used to probe deep into the unconscious mind of individuals for treatment of mental health disorders. When we deal with capitalism, gender equality, corruption, architecture of buildings, women’s empowerment and similar social problems that have inbuilt destructive elements, can psychoanalysis provide solutions? In the experience of this reviewer, the main point is that policy makers should understand the acquisitive urge. There may be many existing systems of ethical constraints which can be accepted to produce an improved outcome for the world. What is seen, at least as regards environment and climate change, is a very slow, halting, apologetic set of legal steps to control pollution, fully realising that the apocalypse of climate collapse is approaching at a faster pace. The book would have been more provocative if it had dealt with this struggle between governance and the people from a Lacanian perspective.