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# “Conscripts of modernity: the tragedy of colonial enlightenment,” David Scott
- URL: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/anticolonialism-2777jsp/
- Published: 2005-08-24T23:08:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-04-17T11:51:40.000Z
- Author: Danny Postel
- Tags: #en, #Migrated, #Import 2026-04-09 19:17, #ImagesUploaded

![0822334445.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg](https://storage.ghost.io/c/3f/80/3f804bea-4b2d-4ddf-9ff0-6ec7d0afa5fa/content/images/2026/04/0822334445_01__SCLZZZZZZZ__wF4P5fA-1776425894969.jpg)

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**“Conscripts of modernity: the tragedy of colonial enlightenment”** 
**by David Scott**  
Duke University Press | November 2004 | ISBN 0822334445

**Buy now:** [UK](http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/redirect?link%5Fcode=ur2&camp=1634&tag=opendemocracy-21&creative=6738&path=ASIN/0822334445/qid=1124911941/sr=8-1/ref=sr%5F8%5Fxs%5Fap%5Fi1%5Fxgl&ref=opendemocracy.net), [US](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?link%5Fcode=ur2&camp=1789&tag=opendemocra0a-20&creative=9325&path=tg/detail/-/0822334445/qid=1124911845/sr=8-1/ref=sr%5F8%5Fxs%5Fap%5Fi1%5Fxgl14?v=glance%26s=books%26n=507846&ref=opendemocracy.net), [Worldwide](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?link%5Fcode=ur2&camp=1789&tag=opendemocra0a-20&creative=9325&path=tg/stores/static/-/gateway/international-gateway/ref=gw%5Fsubnav%5Fin&ref=opendemocracy.net)

Recommended by Danny Postel: “This book is fascinating, and I recommend it highly. It is about the legacy of anti-colonial struggles and their overall failure to realise the emancipatory ideals they upheld. To make sense of this, Scott proposes that what he calls the spirit of ‘romantic anti-colonialism’ be replaced by a tragic sense of history. He interweaves a reading of C.L.R. James’ classic study The Black Jacobins with Hannah Arendt’s On Revolution. Tremendously thought-provoking and relevant.”

**What the publisher says**: “At this stalled and disillusioned juncture in postcolonial history — when many anti-colonial utopias have withered into a morass of exhaustion, corruption, and authoritarianism — David Scott argues the need to reconceptualise the past in order to reimagine a more usable future. He describes how, prior to independence, anti-colonialists narrated the transition from colonialism to postcolonialism as romance—as a story of overcoming and vindication, of salvation and redemption. Scott contends that postcolonial scholarship assumes the same trajectory, and that this imposes conceptual limitations. He suggests that tragedy may be a more useful narrative frame than romance. In tragedy, the future does not appear as part of a seamless forward movement, but instead as a slow and sometimes reversible series of ups and downs.”

**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](http://www.smallaxe.net/home/smallaxe.html?ref=opendemocracy.net).