面對當前的知識困境，在尋找可能的出路時，重新理解、定位與認同第三世界相通的歷史經驗或許是一條有潛力但尚未開展出來的路徑。戰後半個世紀中陳映真的思想與文學對於第三世界主體性的構築與積累，正提供了值得依託的豐富精神資源。以追溯陳映真的第三世界論為起點，本文透過分析他的三篇以發瘋為主題的小說，企圖開始進入戰後的第三世界精神狀態：早期的〈文書〉、中期的〈萬商帝君〉、近期的〈夜霧〉。分析中得到的體會是，陳映真對於第三世界的理解其實根植於他對於自身生存環境的認識、記錄、思考與書寫，因而對於第三世界的連帶與認同是內在的。今天要能夠重新建立第三世界的思想座標，我們必須持續挖掘與辨識極其異質的精神史的軌跡，才能掌握我們自身當下的處境，從而想像未來。

To overcome the present crisis of conditions of knowledge, an effort to re-conceptualize, position and identify the shared experiences of the Third World is perhaps an intellectual project which is worth undertaking but under explored. In the past half century, Chen Yingzhen’s thought and literature, having accumulated a body of work surrounding Third World subjectivity, have become extremely rich intellectual resources for us to study. This essay first traces Chen’s discourse on the Third World, and then proceeds to analyze his three novels on the lunatics, the madman, and the mental patient, with a motive to begin to enter the mental conditions in the post War Third World. Engaging with his work as a whole, I come to the conviction that Chen’s understanding of the Third World is, after all, grounded in his struggle with, his documentation of, his pondering over, and his writing of the immediate social environment within which he has lived; and therefore, his solidarity and identification with the Third World is an internal or immanent relation. If the attempt to reconstruct the Third World as a main reference system of thought is to be realized, we will need to continue to explore and to mark out the highly heterogeneous trajectories of the history of the mental conditions, so that we can more properly come to terms with the conditions of our present from which to imagine the future.