Yousaf Nishat-Botero | City, University of London (original) (raw)
Yousaf Nishat-Botero holds a PhD in Organization Studies from Bayes Business School, City, University of London, and an MA in Philosophy & Contemporary Critical Theory from the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy, Kingston University. Yousaf's research interests are at the intersections of critical theory, organization studies, and political economy/ecology. These interests guide his research into democratic economic planning, climate justice, and urban-agrarian questions. Some of this work on democratic planning and (urban) political ecology can be read in academic journals like Organization and Competition & Change (see below and publications section). During his time at City, he has also been involved in teaching courses on organisational behaviour (seminar leader), critical thinking (tutorial session leader), classical social theory (seminar leader), contemporary social theory (seminar leader), and the international political economy of climate change (module leader). Yousaf is also a member of the editorial collective at ephemera, which is an independent and open access journal on theory and politics in organisation.
PhD 2019 - 2024: Bayes Business School, City, University of London (under supervision of Hugh Willmott and André Spicer)
MA 2018: Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy, Kingston University (under supervision of Peter Hallward)
Supervisors: Hugh Willmott and André Spicer
Address: London, UK
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Papers by Yousaf Nishat-Botero
Competition & Change: The journal of globalisation, financialisation, and political economy, 2023
Through what kind of spaces might postcapitalist planning emerge? How will the process of wrestin... more Through what kind of spaces might postcapitalist planning emerge? How will the process of wresting collective control over the relations of production and reproduction, and over our metabolic exchange with the rest of nature, unfold through struggle? In seeking answers to such questions, this article reviews the literature on democratic economic planning beyond capitalism and makes the case for a renewed engagement with issues of space and the urban through a closer reading of Henri Lefebvre’s work on planetary urbanization and the production of space. We argue that, to date, the economic planning literature has tended to focus on overcoming abstract labour time rather than abstract space – an oversight that prevents us from fully apprehending the urban form through which capitalism produces and reproduces its conditions of possibility and carries the seeds of its own destruction and potential supersession. Engaging with recent critical theorizing on the logistics revolution and the logistical state, we argue that postcapitalist forms of planning will arrive through an urban revolution, through struggles over urban everyday life.We suggest that future investigations into the possibilities for a democratic economic planning beyond capitalism should attend to actually existing empirical struggles over the urban – as the mediator of capitalist relations – and look for inspiration to historical and contemporary examples of municipalist praxis aiming to reinvent the commune.
Organization: The critical journal of organization, theory and society, 2024
The idea of planning has reappeared as an object of interest for critical research on post-capita... more The idea of planning has reappeared as an object of interest for critical research on post-capitalist organizational futures. This article offers a critical review of the emerging scholarship on planning, with reference to historical and contemporary precursors to democratic planning. Building on this review, the article develops a critical political ecology of planning that situates planning thought and practice within the matrix of the oikos. This encompasses not only the sphere of production and commodity exchange, but also the household of reproductive labour and the planetary household of the natural world. In this way, it is argued that democratic planning is indispensable for generating the forms of collective intelligibility and power needed to heal the web of life. By reimagining and reframing planning, the article aims to expand the ‘archive’ of social imaginaries, as part of broader efforts to envision and struggle for more desirable organizational futures.
This dissertation engages in a close reading of Jacques Lacan’s ‘The Function and Field of Speech... more This dissertation engages in a close reading of Jacques Lacan’s ‘The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis’ (1953). My interpretation of this text aims to show that there is an implicit affirmation of freedom in this foundational period of Lacanian theory. I begin by outlining Lacan’s ‘return to Freud’ to show the simultaneously retrospective and prospective orientation of Lacan’s disciplinary renewal of the Freudian Field. In order to show what is at stake in Lacan’s suspicion of the ‘discourses on freedom’, I then examine Lacan’s account of the realization of the subject by distinguishing between alienation in the imaginary and subjection to the symbolic, with particular reference to the creative function of speech, the logic of scansion, and the motif of retroaction. I end by focusing on the examples offered in ‘Function and Field’, to propose a politicized account of historicization that, like full speech, opens a space for new symbolic beginnings.
To cite this document:
Nishat-Botero, Y. (2018). The Advent of The Subject: The Theory of Freedom in Lacan's Rome Discourse. MA dissertation, Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy, Kingston University, London.
Competition & Change: The journal of globalisation, financialisation, and political economy, 2023
Through what kind of spaces might postcapitalist planning emerge? How will the process of wrestin... more Through what kind of spaces might postcapitalist planning emerge? How will the process of wresting collective control over the relations of production and reproduction, and over our metabolic exchange with the rest of nature, unfold through struggle? In seeking answers to such questions, this article reviews the literature on democratic economic planning beyond capitalism and makes the case for a renewed engagement with issues of space and the urban through a closer reading of Henri Lefebvre’s work on planetary urbanization and the production of space. We argue that, to date, the economic planning literature has tended to focus on overcoming abstract labour time rather than abstract space – an oversight that prevents us from fully apprehending the urban form through which capitalism produces and reproduces its conditions of possibility and carries the seeds of its own destruction and potential supersession. Engaging with recent critical theorizing on the logistics revolution and the logistical state, we argue that postcapitalist forms of planning will arrive through an urban revolution, through struggles over urban everyday life.We suggest that future investigations into the possibilities for a democratic economic planning beyond capitalism should attend to actually existing empirical struggles over the urban – as the mediator of capitalist relations – and look for inspiration to historical and contemporary examples of municipalist praxis aiming to reinvent the commune.
Organization: The critical journal of organization, theory and society, 2024
The idea of planning has reappeared as an object of interest for critical research on post-capita... more The idea of planning has reappeared as an object of interest for critical research on post-capitalist organizational futures. This article offers a critical review of the emerging scholarship on planning, with reference to historical and contemporary precursors to democratic planning. Building on this review, the article develops a critical political ecology of planning that situates planning thought and practice within the matrix of the oikos. This encompasses not only the sphere of production and commodity exchange, but also the household of reproductive labour and the planetary household of the natural world. In this way, it is argued that democratic planning is indispensable for generating the forms of collective intelligibility and power needed to heal the web of life. By reimagining and reframing planning, the article aims to expand the ‘archive’ of social imaginaries, as part of broader efforts to envision and struggle for more desirable organizational futures.
This dissertation engages in a close reading of Jacques Lacan’s ‘The Function and Field of Speech... more This dissertation engages in a close reading of Jacques Lacan’s ‘The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis’ (1953). My interpretation of this text aims to show that there is an implicit affirmation of freedom in this foundational period of Lacanian theory. I begin by outlining Lacan’s ‘return to Freud’ to show the simultaneously retrospective and prospective orientation of Lacan’s disciplinary renewal of the Freudian Field. In order to show what is at stake in Lacan’s suspicion of the ‘discourses on freedom’, I then examine Lacan’s account of the realization of the subject by distinguishing between alienation in the imaginary and subjection to the symbolic, with particular reference to the creative function of speech, the logic of scansion, and the motif of retroaction. I end by focusing on the examples offered in ‘Function and Field’, to propose a politicized account of historicization that, like full speech, opens a space for new symbolic beginnings.
To cite this document:
Nishat-Botero, Y. (2018). The Advent of The Subject: The Theory of Freedom in Lacan's Rome Discourse. MA dissertation, Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy, Kingston University, London.