ABSTRACT
The role of the state at shaping politics in postcolonial and post-revolutionary contexts is a topic that has attracted plenty of attention among cultural and political theorists with postcolonial leanings. One aspect that was discussed already in the Introduction concerned the experiences of a ‘Great Disillusion’ (Memmi 2006) and disappointment with the postcolonial state resulting from the failed promises of universal emancipation carried by anticolonial national liberation, and from the different projects of privatisation and market liberalisation that have redefined the nature of nation-states especially since the 1980s onwards. Scott (2004 and 1999) argues that what he sees as the tragic trajectory of the postcolonial state has had a profound impact upon the questions that define the current conjuncture, the political problem-space of postcolonialism, and the horizon of expectations upon which postcolonial subjects may base hopes for a better future. Instead of teleological, redemptive narratives of collective liberation that were central to anti-colonial imaginaries, postcolonial political subjects negotiate their position amidst increasing uncertainty regarding the eventual impact and consequences of their actions, and in a context in which power and oppression appear increasingly de-territorialising, complex and difficult to address effectively.
