 Can the anti-politics machine be dismantled?Rajesh Venugopal New Political Economy, 2022, vol. 27, issue 6, 1002-1016 Abstract: This paper engages with a central problem in development studies: why is development so depoliticised, and how can this be remedied? It does so by providing a theoretical/conceptual framework of the way that the ‘political’ and the ‘technical’ are constructed as a cognitive gap in the inner frame of the development planner. Drawing on Scott, Schmitt, Weber, Horkheimer & Adorno, and the critical development literature, it argues that politics presents itself to the planner as a sphere of uncertainty that can disrupt project outcomes. Knowledge production about development politics, for example through political economy analysis, is thus a compulsion that arises from the need to govern this source of uncertainty. The politics rendered legible and decoded in this way is also ipso facto no longer part of the political unknown, but now belongs to the realm of the technical. The implications of this framework are that the anti-politics machine will perpetually regenerate itself. The work of mitigating technocratic excess is productive, but it is a Sisyphian labour that will not have a clean or satisfying end-date. Date: 2022 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:27:y:2022:i:6:p:1002-1016 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2022.2045926 Access Statistics for this article New Political Economy is currently edited by Professor Colin Hay More articles in New Political Economy from Taylor & Francis Journals |
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