Spoken moments of a pernicious discourse? Querying Foucauldian critics' representations of development professionals

Abstract

Critics influenced by Foucault understand development professionals to be determined by the official knowledge produced within their discourse to actions that harm their putative beneficiaries. This discourages these authors from looking more closely at development professionals and limits their value as allies for the social movements they champion. Through a series of interviews this paper finds that development professionals have a range of understandings of their knowledge, that each suggests distinct ranges of permissible action and that these offer terrains for the formation of alliances that are not anticipated by Foucauldian critics. It also finds that the practices required to exploit these opportunities perversely reinforce the status of official knowledge and that this status may ultimately constrain development in ways that are neither anticipated by Foucauldian critics nor operationally acceptable.

Notes

This article is drawn from one chapter of my dissertation. As with that work, I am indebted to the development professionals who afforded me more time than expected, to my advisors, Sangeeta Kamat, Joe Berger, Ann Ferguson and Julie Graham, whose patience I tested, to the participants in the Subjects of Economies seminars hosted by Julie Graham over the course of two years and to Chizu Sato, who has encouraged and ‘gently’ created opportunities for me to pursue this study.

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3 JL Parpart, ‘Deconstructing the development “expert”’, in JL Parpart & MH Marchand (eds), Feminism/Postmodernism/Development, London: Routledge, 1995.

4 These authors do often and unfortunately mix a critique of the content of development knowledge with their critique of the discourse that houses its production, invocation and implementation.

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13 In this paper I use the term ‘subject’ to refer to the agents of a discourse and ‘object’ to refer to those on whom these subjects work.

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25 I have changed a few details to maintain anonymity.

26 Rather than speaking in terms of the sedimentation of bias, poststructural theory provides the language of discourse: an individual is incrementally seen to become more fully the subject of a particular discourse.

27 D Hilhorst, ‘Village experts and development discourse: “progress” in a Philippine Igorot village’, Human Organization, 60 (4), 2001, pp 401 – 413.

28 Michel Foucault, ‘Power/knowledge: selected interviews and other writings, 1972 – 1977’, in Colin Gordon (ed), Two Lectures, New York: Pantheon Books, 1980.

29 Hilhorst, The Real World of ngos; and Hilhorst, ‘Village experts and development discourse’.

30 A Ferguson, ‘Resisting the veil of privilege-building bridge identities as an ethico-politics of global feminisms’, Hypatia, 13 (3), 1998, pp 94 – 104.