After Post‐Development: On Capitalism,Difference, and Representation

The post‐development school associated with the thought of Arturo Escobar treats development as a discursive invention of the West, best countered by ethnographic attention to local knowledge of people marginalised by colonial modernity. This approach promises paths to more equitable and sustainable alternatives to development. Post‐development has been criticised vigorously in the past. But despite its conceptual and political shortcomings, it remains the most popular critical approach to development and is reemerging in decolonial and pluriversal guises. This paper contends that the post‐development critique of mainstream development has run its course and deserves a fresh round of criticism. We argue that those committed to struggles for social justice must critically reassess the premises of post‐development and especially wrestle with the problem of representation. We contend that Gayatri Spivak's work is particularly important to this project. We review some of Spivak's key texts on capitalism, difference, and development to clarify the virtues of her approach.