Ilan Kapoor (born 1959) is a professor of Critical Development Studies at the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change at York University in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

[9] Kapoor examines recent international development policy areas (governance, human/gender rights, participation), carrying out a cultural and political economy critique of them.

The book concludes by arguing for the need for a radical self-reflexivity on the part of development workers, institutions and academics; while at the same time emphasizing the political strategies of marginalized groups that can lead to greater democratic dialogue.

He takes them to task for being more interested in branding, spectacle and short-term results than addressing broader and long-term problems of social inequality and political inclusion.

For Kapoor, the unpredictability and excess of unconscious desire are not only the source of "irrationality" but also a political resource for breaking out of the global capitalist status quo.

The book also examines the gender and racial dimensions of global political economy, suggesting that unconscious desire/enjoyment of domination is integral to capital accumulation.

The book distinguishes the psychoanalytic approach from the latter schools of thought by focusing on present-day case studies, including digital and green modernization, trade, neopopulism, anti-racist training, and radical politics in Iran's Women, Life, Freedom movement.