The leader of Mozambique’s Renamo party, Afonso Dhlakama, died on May 3, 2018. His death both necessitates an ethnographic, regionally comparative rethinking of the analytical approach to the dominant Mozambican political parties (Frelimo and Renamo) as diametrically opposed formations from independence onward and invites a more general reconsideration of anthropological approaches to politics and the trajectory of African postcolonial states. Based on long-term fieldwork in Chimoio, Maputo, and Nampula, we analyze and compare articulations of political subjectivity and launch a novel reading of Mozambique’s political dynamics, arguing how the erstwhile bifurcated political order is structured by a singular, imminent political ontology. Rather than analyzing politics by privileging institutions, identities, or movements, we contribute to an anthropology that underlines politics as fundamentally shaped by the formation and manipulation of broader systems of meaning, registers, and their spatiotemporal context—aspects that elude analyses on the basis of political discourse or voting patterns. Highlighting the genealogy of this political ontology and emphasizing its generative and imminent nature in terms of forging subjectivity, we explore its enduring yet brittle nature, which includes hegemonic stasis, contestation, and the potential for openings and breakdowns.

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遥不可及：莫桑比克的迫在眉睫、意义和政治本体论

莫桑比克民族团结党领袖阿方索·德拉卡马于 2018 年 5 月 3 日去世。邀请更广泛地重新考虑人类学的政治方法和非洲后殖民国家的轨迹。基于在希莫尤、马普托和楠普拉的长期田野调查，我们分析和比较了政治主体性的表达方式，并对莫桑比克的政治动态进行了新的解读，论证了从前分叉的政治秩序是如何由单一的、迫在眉睫的政治本体构成的。而不是通过特权机构、身份或运动来分析政治，我们对强调政治的人类学做出了贡献，从根本上来说，政治是由更广泛的意义系统、记录及其时空背景的形成和操纵所塑造的——这些方面无法基于政治话语或投票模式进行分析。突出这一政治本体的谱系，并强调其在塑造主体性方面的生成性和迫在眉睫的性质，我们探索其持久而脆弱的性质，包括霸权停滞、竞争以及开放和崩溃的可能性。