Introduction: Developmentalism—On a Trope of (Dis)Enchantment

Abstract

The introduction seeks to unravel the issue of developmentalism, by critically engaging with the corpus of knowledge on development, to underline the relative absence of the approach and objective that this book upholds. Adopting an interdisciplinary thrust, though informed by the anthropological imperative of dealing with modern myth, this chapter will spell out the broad framework befitting a convergence of the conventional reasoning with the content and discontent of development, as well as the unconventional engagement with the enchanting anchors and moorings, the cultural artifacts of development, and constitution of psychic inclination to the developmental mythologies. It plays with polemic, an ancient intellectual art, in support of the framework of the book. A creative usage of such an art of polemic is thereby reflective of the contents and discontents, adequately dramatic, integral to developmentalism. As the book aims at bringing about a realization that both, verbal and visual, heard and seen, are prominent sites of experiences of developmentalist constructions, seeing and showing entails a denial of the repressed sound and sight in the larger terrain of developmentalism. This introductory chapter makes a modest attempt to make sense of the dramatics of development, which we invariably refer to as developmentalism.