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Paper short abstract

Debates about development as a field of study ( disabled by its multi trans interdisciplinarity), theory or practice privilege structure and coloniality and modernity/rationality epistemology. This analytical paper debunks symbolic decoloniality of development in preference for actional options.

Paper long abstract

Imperial epistemology (domestic and global) and the reluctance to evolve Development Studies into a full discipline, I argue, is responsible for development to function as a blank space. Development as a blank slate has been and continues to be populated with notions such as it being an extension of colonial studies and I add preservation of white civilisation, being about anti-communism ideology or a logical ethical extension of the the Marshall plan to the rest of the world, a construction to birth industry for Geopolitical North, coloniality of being by Western imperial knowledge systems and culture, North-America-Western Europe double barreled narcissism, trilogy of dependent process of change-policy and practice-dominant discourse, and United Nation's behind time global sustainable development goals and Trump denied global development cooperation. Both the antiquated and contemporary debates about the development of so called late comers collapse into the solipsism of the theodicean of structure/ hierarchical agency dualism. This desktop analytical study found that contemporary efforts of decolonizing development either hold epistemic combat as a virtue and lifestyle, and deny development as a means and end of their scholarship in development studies; or celebrate parlance and difference as a school of thought while the lived experiences of every day people and the environment are worsening unabetted. This paper recommends, what I framed elsewhere as Authentic Decolonial Cultural Synthesis Praxis, as a means to a conversations inclined towards options of development as maturity that demands being actional (Fanon) with hallmarks of responsible development (Chambers).