Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Foreword
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: Politics is thought, thought is real, people think
- Part 1 Thinking political sequences: From African history to African historical political sequences
- Part 2 Opening up the thought of politics in Africa today: Exceeding the limits of sociology: Beyond representation
- Conclusion: Reclaiming the domain of freedom
- Bibliography
- Index
Part 2 - Opening up the thought of politics in Africa today: Exceeding the limits of sociology: Beyond representation
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 April 2018
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Foreword
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: Politics is thought, thought is real, people think
- Part 1 Thinking political sequences: From African history to African historical political sequences
- Part 2 Opening up the thought of politics in Africa today: Exceeding the limits of sociology: Beyond representation
- Conclusion: Reclaiming the domain of freedom
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-changing can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice.
– Karl Marx, Theses on Feuerbach, 1845 (emphasis in original)History does not contain within itself a solution to the problems it places on the agenda. However brilliant and memorable the historical riots in the Arab World, they finally came up against universal problems of politics that had remained unresolved in the previous period … at the core of which is … that of organization.
– Alain Badiou, Le Réveil de l'histoire, 2011 (emphasis in original, translation modified)To say that politics is of the order of thought is an attempt to conceive of politics after the end of classism and within another space than that of the state; but first and foremost, it is to say that politics is not given in the space of an object, be it that of the ‘state’ or that of ‘revolution’ … The enterprise of conceiving politics from elsewhere than from the state or from the economy is an enterprise of freedom and of a domain proper to decision.
– Sylvain Lazarus, Anthropologie du nom, 1996 (my translation)The great powers of the world may have done wonders in giving the world an industrial and military look, but the great gift still has to come from Africa – giving the world a more human face.
– Steve Biko, I Write What I Like, 1987- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Thinking Freedom in AfricaToward a Theory of Emancipatory Politics, pp. 241 - 242Publisher: Wits University PressPrint publication year: 2016