Total enframing: Global South and techno-developmental orthodoxy

Abstract

Martin Heidegger describes technology in essence as the late modern Western understanding of Being which is planetary in its reach. Succeeding the long phase of colonialism after World War II, the history of the global spread of this understanding of Being is intertwined with the developmental and globalization eras in the Global South. Techno-capitalist development crowds out alternative forms of economic and social life, which have been meaningfully prevalent in the Global South. The monistic metaphysics that powers developmentalism makes alternatives impossible. However, alternative political possibilities still exist, which are post-metaphysical and posttechno-developmental. Such politics pays attention to the place, things and self that matters to human beings and opens up a space for resisting techno-developmentalism.