Front cover image for Conscripts of modernity : the tragedy of colonial enlightenment

Conscripts of modernity : the tragedy of colonial enlightenment

At this stalled and disillusioned juncture in postcolonial history--when many anticolonial utopias have withered into a morass of exhaustion, corruption, and authoritarianism--this book argues the need to reconceptualize the past in order to reimagine a more usable future. It describes how, prior to independence, anticolonialists narrated the transition from colonialism to postcolonialism as romance--as a story of overcoming and vindication, of salvation and redemption. It contends that postcolonial scholarship assumes the same trajectory, and that this imposes conceptual limitations. It suggests that tragedy may be a more useful narrative frame than romance. In tragedy, the future does not appear as an uninterrupted movement forward, but instead as a slow and sometimes reversible series of ups and downs
Print Book, English, 2004
Duke University Press, Durham, 2004
History
279 pages ; 24 cm
9780822334330, 9780822334446, 082233433X, 0822334445
55624555
Futures past
Romanticism and the longing for anticolonial revolution
Conscripts of modernity
Toussaint's tragic dilemma
The tragedy of colonial enlightenment
Table of contents Table of contents