Abstract
Within critiques of neoliberalism and liberal democracy, Wendy Brown (2005) has stated that democracy has produced “nothing other than ideological shells,” and, through various power relations, normalizes and governs individual bodies (52). Following such critiques, I argue that in the question of democratic transformations within development discourse, it is a productive pursuit to re-engage Donna Haraway’s (1988) theory of Situated Knowledges and partial perspectives. Although there are multiple kinds of governance to consider, I investigate the normalizations of Western culture and the saturation of “objective” economic policies as worldview in interactions between development and democracy, as part of discursive modes of power, and question how each mode of governance has created and sustained such infrastructures as The Global Poor or Third World. Additionally, acknowledging Haraway’s own limitations via partial perspective, I follow her situated knowledges as methodology and include postcolonial writers, such as Chandra Mohanty (2003) and Linda Tuhiwai Smith (2012). Within Foucaultian notions of power, I maintain that the possibilities of resistance are embedded within our own embodied and situated worldviews. That is, by acknowledging and engaging our own differing power relations, situated knowledges provides an ideological framework that might help transform democracy as discourse to democracy as action.
Highlights
This example, the self-identification of “Third World,” is but one example of a mode of self-governance, and in order to productively understand these power discourses as they make and unmake the Third World Body, I engage the institutions of development and democracy
I maintain throughout this piece that both discourses of democracy and development should be discussed together, because each is utilized as a yardstick to measure and survey “The Third World.”
I maintain that exactly because situated knowledges has become so ubiquitous that it ought to be re-located and re-engaged. It should be asked what about this theory allows us to discuss individual bodies and agency within larger discussions of discursive power relations, including democracy and development?
Summary
Two interconnected power relations that can benefit from such an analysis include democracy and development discourses, as historically situated and contemporarily active. Democracy is framed as the only way to develop and progress out of human states of misery, and becomes the architect and distributor of expert knowledge and influence This has taken many different forms, including the distribution of foreign aid. I suggest that it is less the implementation of new practices and techniques between North and South, but that these discourses and practices of development, including aid and democracy, facilitate the continuation of what Ann Stoler (2016) refers to as “duress.” By “duress,” Stoler (2016) emphasizes three key features “of colonial histories of the present,” including “the hardened, Art. 2, page 4 of 9. This is not saying that democracy as an ideal state cannot exist, nor does it suggest that individuals are not working towards those ends; but that democracy, as an institution, has been implemented historically and contemporarily as a mode of discursive power, functioning to benefit particular bodies over others
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