ABSTRACT
The locus of the tragic in democratic political tragedy is ultimately the plight of the wider body politic. The tragic plight extends as such beyond the primary political actors, entrenched in their one-sidedness to the community as whole that spirals along with them to their mutually assured doom. Reversal of this sort obtains as well, for the consciousness currently still invested in the question of human freedom in the postcolony, and reflecting thus critically upon the meaning of the tragic episodes the aftermath from which we engage in theorizing. The tragic political experience provides as such the basis for a firmer grasp of the terrain of affliction and struggle, as well as for a clearer path forward than was conceived of prior to it. Although they came to embody the upsurges from the Fanonian zone of non-being that concerned us above, Manley and Mandela become rooted like Enriquillo, Cudjoe, and Toussaint in the trappings of the present.
