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Conscripts of Modernity: The Tragedy of Colonial Enlightenment.(Book review)
- Article from:
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Oceania
- Article date:
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November 1, 2007
- Author:
- Kowal, Emma
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Copyright informationCOPYRIGHT 2007 University of Sydney. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Conscripts of Modernity: The Tragedy of Colonial Enlightenment. By David Scott Durham NC: Duke University Press, 2005. Pp:279 US $22.95 paper
Have you noticed these days that happy endings are few and far between? The latest book from anthropologist and political theorist David Scott would suggest that the postcolonial era from the 1960s on has seen the exhaustion of happy endings, both as narrative devices and historical events.
Scott is based at Columbia University and is a native-born ethnographer of Jamaica. His ambitious monograph Conscripts of Modernity addresses the problem of colonial and postcolonial histories that draw on a narrative of 'anti-colonial ...