Abstract This paper situates the South African constitutional project in a wider temporal and ideological frame of reference as an anticolonial project and asks what the postcolonial critique of the constitutional project and the postcolonial state can offer to deepen our understanding of contemporary forms of cruelty and injustice in the form of inequality and misrecognition. It identifies the limits of ‘Constitutional legalism’ and is critical of the ‘triumphalist’ mode of appreciating the Constitution. Constitutional legalism postulates a text that contains a comprehensive conception of justice that awaits implementation and has settled all relevant questions arising from our colonial past. Instead, the Constitution should be conceived as an ‘incompletely theorised agreement’ which deferred many questions and which conceals many ongoing disagreements. But this paper also recognises the Constitution and its central propositions - human rights, the rule of law and popular self-government as genuine anticolonial achievements, which provide framework concepts and institutions for collective action and democratic politics. So the paper is also critical of the ‘culturalist’ critique that denounces the Constitution as a ‘betrayal’ that inscribes Eurocentric forms of reason as a permanent obstacle to the attainment of a genuinely postcolonial society. It proposes, as an alternative to both the ‘legalist’ defence and ‘culturalist’ critique that the idea of the ‘demos’ should be restored to its central place in the imaginary of South African constitutionalism. The Constitution can then be reconceived not as the perfect product of a singular moment in South African history but as an ongoing activity requiring dialogue, including inter-generational dialogue, and a democratic framework within which to strive for social change.

中文翻译：

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后殖民时代的民主宪政：超越胜利与背叛

摘要 本文将南非宪法项目置于更广泛的时间和意识形态参考框架中作为反殖民项目，并询问对宪法项目和后殖民国家的后殖民批判可以提供什么，以加深我们对当代形式的残酷和不公正的理解不平等和误认的形式。它确定了“宪法法律主义”的局限性，并批判了欣赏宪法的“必胜主义”模式。宪法律法主义假定一个文本包含一个全面的正义概念，等待实施，并解决了我们殖民历史产生的所有相关问题。反而，宪法应被视为一种“不完全理论化的协议”，它推迟了许多问题并隐藏了许多正在进行的分歧。但本文也承认宪法及其核心主张——人权、法治和人民自治是真正的反殖民成就，为集体行动和民主政治提供了框架概念和制度。因此，这篇论文还批评了“文化主义者”的批评，该批评谴责宪法是一种“背叛”，将欧洲中心主义形式的理性铭刻为实现真正的后殖民社会的永久障碍。它提出，作为“法律主义者”辩护和“文化主义者”批评的替代方案，即“演示”的概念应该恢复到其在南非宪政想象中的中心位置。这样，宪法就不再是南非历史上某个特定时刻的完美产物，而是需要进行对话（包括代际对话）和争取社会变革的民主框架的持续活动。