Contemporary postcolonial critique poses questions about the impact of colonization on the construction of the political. Beginning with David Scott’s account of the limits and even hopeless condition of anticolonial resistance and postcolonial theory, this thesis explores one way in which the political might be reconstructed under postcolonial conditions. The analysis is primarily theoretical in character. I work through texts by Immanuel Kant, Mary Douglas and Partha Chatterjee to recount the narrative of modern politics and its affect upon postcolonial societies. On this basis, I recognize the sovereign state as the key point of contention in accounts of the continuing reproduction of social exclusions. I then identify the imposition of colonial Enlightenment to have refigured authentic modes of self-representation for the colonized; colonial Enlightenment I suggest, conflated cultural difference with the value of right, and has thereby largely depoliticized practices of exclusion. Shifting to consider how postcolonial political space might be reconstructed, I draw on Warren Magnusson’s understanding of urban politics. By challenging the ontological positioning of the sovereign state, the city may be understood as a dynamic political actor that does not erase cultural difference. Then by examining practices of scavenging in Brazil and Argentina, I compare one case in which the sovereign state has effectively perpetuated conditions of social exclusion with a case in which a municipality has been able to address these conditions. I conclude that the contemporary condition of postcolonial critique can indeed be taken in more optimistic directions through challenges to the ontological primacy of the sovereign state so that the value of difference can be recognized and emancipation rethought. / Graduate / 0615 / kerstin@uvic.ca