Table of Contents

Prologue 1
1. Futures Past 23
2. Romanticism and the Longing for Anticolonial Revolution 58
3. Conscripts of Modernity 98
4. Toussaint's Tragic Dilemma 132
5. The Tragedy of Colonial Enlightenment 170
Epilogue 209
Notes 223
Acknowledgments 271
Index 273

Promotional Information

Uses C.L.R. James'sThe Black Jacobins as a jumping-off point for a reconsideration of colonial and postcolonial concepts of history, politics, and agency.

About the Author

David Scott is Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University. He is the author of Refashioning Futures: Criticism after Postcoloniality and Formations of Ritual: Colonial and Anthropological Discourses on the Sinhala Yaktovil. He is editor of the journal Small Axe.

Reviews

"Conscripts of Modernity is a highly original and lucidly argued text, a major advance in David Scott's effort to elaborate a new form of postcolonial criticism in the wake of the collapse of the emancipatory hopes embodied in the anticolonialist moment. Scott's position will be found controversial by some. But it will not and cannot be ignored." Stuart Hall, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, The Open University