Paraphilanthropy: Giving money its freedom papers

A sea-change sweeps across philanthropic landscapes today. Critiques of philanthropy, especially in its newer iterations of philanthrocapitalism, consider its colonial legacies, its deleterious effects on minorities, and the reinforcement of a politics of domination. As a result of these new perspectives, philanthropists and funders are now forced to re-evaluate their operations. In this paper, I suggest that “spending-out” as a gesture of divestiture, as a way of responding to the challenges thrown by critiques of philanthrocapitalism, may not address what feels novel about emerging counter-capitalist concerns. More central to this piece is the idea that philanthrocapitalist critiques, by drawing attention to the exclusivist tendencies of industrial giving, seem to leave us within the troubling orbit of inclusivity – a dynamic that reinforces white modernity’s hold as the baseline reality. I suggest – with my coinage ‘paraphilanthropy’, that decolonial gestures need fugitivity, a longing for the non-legible, and support for social experimentation within undercultures of practice.

Bayo Akomolafe

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