ABSTRACT
What kinds of development become imaginable if we reject ‘the national economy’ as a legitimate object of experts’ understanding and control? Drawing on a combination of antiessentialist Marxian theory, postcolonial theory, and fem inist theory, Bergeron examines the mechanisms by which (the nation’ is produced as a manageable economic entity within both mainstream and critical narratives concerned with the question of development. By exposing the multitude of sometimes contradictory knowledges and practices that exist within and outside dominant approaches to the study of development economics, this book resignifies ‘the nation’ in a manner whose contradictory and heterogeneous effects cascade through and destabilize the interlocking web of signifiers for which it serves as a nodal point. With this text, Bergeron is opening up a space from which we may imagine alternatives that are not visible on terms legitimate within the current apparatus of development.
