Gustavo Vargas-Book Prcis

In Conscripts of Modernity, David Scott claims a reformulation of the past in order to reimagine more meaningful and viable futures. Referring specifically to the colonial history of the
West Indies, Scott borrowing an evocative Shakespearean quote- argues that our postcolonial
present is out of joint (2). After the failure of the anticolonial projects of emancipation,
postcolonial theorists continue to answer questions that are no longer being asked because they
belong to different problem spaces. They interpreted their presents and possible futures from a
past narrative of anticolonialism that has been emplotted in the realm of the Romance. This
distinctive narrative form reinforces the illusion of history as a narrative of epic succession that
is ever progressing to a redemptive space of vindication and liberation. Being emphatically
distrustful of a narrative of longing for total revolution, Scott finds the concept of tragedy
more adequate and alluring to explain the narrative relation to a narrative history that is
constructed as a broken series of paradoxes and reversals in which human action is ever open
to unaccountable contingencies and luck (13).
In order to demonstrate the salience of tragedy in his arguments, Scott makes use of an
anticolonial novel entitled The Black Jacobins by the Afro-Trinidadian writer C.L.R James. The
five chapters of his book revolve around this literary text and specifically the second revised
edition published in 1963. In the first chapter, Scott exposes the problem of the representation of
the past in the present especially from a politico-historical perspective. By using Jamess
novel preface, Scott defines Black Jacobins as an exercise in writing a history of the present
that urged to rethink an adequate narrative for our present sociohistorical reality. In chapter two
Scott bonds James novel to the tradition of the Romance and the figuration of the martyred
hero, and argues that this narrative was effective in a specific problem-space of anticolonial
revolution and black political agency that no longer resonates in our pessimistic presents in
which history cannot be conceived as linear direction of liberation and freedom. In chapter
three, Scott establishes that for the colonial subjects modernity was not a voluntary choice, but a
coercive conscription. From an apparent possibility of choices, modernity was itself one of the
fundamental conditions of choice (19). In chapter four and five departing from the narrative of
anticolonial romance, LOverture is considered under a tragic lens. His position as a modern
colonial intellectual constitutes his doom because his options of political action are not
opposed but within modernity itself. Therefore, the tragedy of colonial Enlightenment arises
new ways to complicate and opening up spaces for ethical-political theorizing in the
postcolonial presents and its possible futures.
Undoubtedly, Conscripts of Modernity is a remarkable and creative attempt to reformulate the
framework of Caribbean postcolonial studies. Nevertheless, I found certain inconsistencies in his
ideas. First, although he vehemently critiques the employment of a romantic narrative to understand
the past, he is also falls into an idealistic mystification of the figure of LOverture and the heros fatal
destiny. In my opinion, by advancing tragedy, he also romanticizes it. Moreover, for Scott colonial
masses have no agency of their own. They need a Colonial Hamlet a conscript of modernity- to
guide them to an inexistent path of liberty. Therefore, revolutionary struggle is devoid of meaning
since history always falls into the tragic. Although I recognize that Scotts argumentations seem to be
fit into our fatalistic present, they are inherently manicheistic. For him, everything has to be
understood on the limits of tragedy. Struggling for a better future seems to become a futile enterprise
since advancement or improvement can never be expected as the natural outcome, but as byproducts of chance and luck. In addition, Scott writing style turns repetitive at times since he is
concerned that his arguments could potentially be misunderstood in many instances of his book, and
thus it prevents a more smoothly argumentation of his ideas.