Conscripts of ModernityAt this stalled and disillusioned juncture in postcolonial historywhen many anticolonial utopias have withered into a morass of exhaustion, corruption, and authoritarianismDavid Scott argues the need to reconceptualize the past in order to reimagine a more usable future. He describes how, prior to independence, anticolonialists narrated the transition from colonialism to postcolonialism as romanceas a story of overcoming and vindication, of salvation