ABSTRACT Mamdani’s review of my book Thinking Freedom in Africa remains within the analytical binaries which characterise his thinking. As a result he fails completely to comprehend my argument. The problem is compounded by the fact that he seems, at best, to have read the book only partially. I do not oppose “differences” to “universal humanity”, but argue that in order to understand a politics of emancipation on the African continent, one must begin from those exceptional cases when people themselves invent collective dialectical thought, in other words when they exceed subjectively their interests as determined by their social place. This is the case when they think universal equality which they always do through the prism of the particular. I thus oppose dialectical thought to Mamdani’s taxonomic fury. One of the problems with the Social Sciences including the discipline of History, I argue, lies in their inability to jettison a concept of representation through which collective political subjectivities are simply reduced to the actors’ social place. As a result people are denied the ability to think for themselves and thus their own emancipation. In fact all people have the capacity to think their own emancipation, yet such occurrences remain exceptional.

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作为知识主体的学术知识分子和被排除在外的原因：对Mahmood Mamdani的回应

摘要曼达尼（Mamdani）对我的《非洲的思想自由》一书的评论仍然处在表征他的思想的分析二进制文件之内。结果，他完全无法理解我的论点。他似乎充其量似乎只读了一部分书，这使问题更加复杂。我不反对与“全人类”之间的“差异”，而是主张为了理解非洲大陆的一种解放政治，必须从人们自己发明集体辩证法的特殊情况开始，换句话说，当它们超越主观上他们的利益取决于他们的社会地位。当他们认为普遍平等时，就是这种情况，他们总是通过特定的棱镜来做。因此，我反对对Mamdani的分类狂怒的辩证思想。我认为，包括历史学科在内的社会科学的问题之一在于它们无法抛弃代表制，通过这种代表制，集体政治主观性被简单地降低为参与者的社会地位。结果，人们被剥夺了为自己思考的能力，因而丧失了自己的解放的能力。实际上，所有人都有思考自己的解放的能力，但是这种情况仍然很少。