Sightings of the State, Reflections of Self as Citizen: Self-Becoming in Development Encounters

The theoretical lens of governmentality has informed literature that examines how practices of development constitute development subjects: self-regulating bodies that achieve government objectives. Although it is useful, this lens has overlooked other consequences of people’s experiences of development, and the more complex processes of subject making. This article focuses on overlooked effects of the encounter between state and citizens for self-making projects. Encounters with government officials act as a mirror, reflecting and constituting the self as citizen. This subject position as a citizen with a privileged relationship with the state has the potential to contradict erstwhile social positionings as subordinate and inferior. In the context of rural Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, India, I find that encounters with the state offer alternative discursive resources for processes of self-making, with consequences for marginalized villagers’ relations with others.