Introduction: Criticism after Postcoloniality 3
Pt. 1 Rationalities 21
Ch. 1 Colonial Governmentality 23
Ch. 2 Religion in Colonial Civil Society 53
Ch. 3 The Government of Freedom 70
Pt. 2 Histories 91
Ch. 4 Dehistoricizing History 93
Ch. 5 "An Obscure Miracle of Connection" 106
Pt. 3 Futures 129
Ch. 6 The Aftermaths of Sovereignty 131
Ch. 7 Community, Number and the Ethos of Democracy 158
Ch. 8 Fanonian Futures? 190
Coda: After Bandung: From the Politics of Colonial Representation to a Theory of Postcolonial Politics 221
Acknowledgements 225
Index 227

How can we best forge a theoretical practice that directly addresses the struggles of once-colonized countries, many of which face the collapse of both state and society in today's era of economic reform? David Scott argues that recent cultural theories aimed at "deconstructing" Western representations of the non-West have been successful to a point, but that changing realities in these countries require a new approach. In Refashioning Futures, he proposes a strategic practice of criticism that brings the political more clearly into view in areas of the world where the very coherence of a secular-modern project can no longer be taken for granted.
Through a series of linked essays on culture and politics in his native Jamaica and in Sri Lanka, the site of his long scholarly involvement, Scott examines the ways in which modernity inserted itself into and altered the lives of the colonized. The institutional procedures encoded in these modern postcolonial states and their legal systems come under scrutiny, as do our contemporary languages of the political. Scott demonstrates that modern concepts of political representation, community, rights, justice, obligation, and the common good do not apply universally and require reconsideration. His ultimate goal is to describe the modern colonial past in a way that enables us to appreciate more deeply the contours of our historical present and that enlarges the possibility of reshaping it.

David Scott is a Visiting Associate Professor of Anthropology at Johns Hopkins University. He has held appointments at Bates College, the University of Chicago, and the University of the West Indies, Mona. He is the author of Formations of Ritual and is the editor of the journal Small Axe.