Édouard Glissant: A Poetics of Resistance

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Édouard Glissant was a leading voice in debates centering on the postcolonial condition and on the present and future of globalisation. Prolific as both a theorist and a literary author, Glissant started his career as a contemporary of Frantz Fanon in the early days of francophone postcolonial thought. In the latter part of his career Glissant's vision pushed beyond the boundaries of postcolonialism to encompass the contemporary phenomenon of globalisation. Sam Coombes offers a detailed analysis of Glissant's thought, setting out the reasons why Glissant's vision for a world of intercultural interaction both reflects but also seeks to provide a correction to some of the leading tendencies commonly associated with contemporary theory today. Review Arguing that the tension between minoritarian and hegemonic cultures is at the heart of Edouard Glissant's entire theoretical enterprise, Coombes offers us a spirited and informed refutation of charges of political quietism in Glissant's later works. Far from being a sign of political naïveté, the utopian nature of Glissant's political thought is shown to be a necessary prelude to a new progressive, liberatory politics. This is a welcome introduction to the ideas of a major contemporary political theorist. To divide the thought of Edouard Glissant into an early period of Caribbean radical politics on the one hand and a mature phase advancing a depolitized cosmopolitan life of the mind on the other distorts Glissant's legacy. Sam Coombes rescues Glissant from facile naysayers upholding this misrepresentation. He does so through examination of the late Glissant on creolization, immigration, neoliberal political economy, negotiations of universalism and particularism, and visions of human existence that acknowledge nation-state politics while also providing alternative futures for everyday people to resist enslaving dynamics of globalization. A single word captures that project's implication: freedom. About the Author Edouard Glissant (1928 - 2011) was a Martinican philosopher, poet, author and literary critic. Sam Coombes is Lecturer in French at the University of Edinburgh, UK. Cover Half Title Series Title Copyright Contents A Note on Translation Abbreviations Introduction Part One Later Glissantian thought as alternative perspective on globalization Chapter One Poetics of Relation (1990): a manifesto for the twenty-first century? Poetics of Relation: a new vision for a globalized age Chapter Two From Relation to the ‘common-place’: the later Glissantian conceptual schema The ways of the chaos-world Relation, Whole-World and Worldliness La Pensée de la Trace Trembling (‘Le Tremblement’) ‘Errantry’ (‘L’errance’) Archipelic thought The detour The ‘common-place’ (‘lieu-commun’) Part Two Creolization, anti-universalism and twenty-first-century radical thought Chapter Three Creolization and creoleness: proximity and divergence ‘Creolization’: a new theoretical paradigm with a dual application in Glissantian theory The creolist turn in Antillean thought Caribbean critical responses to ‘Créolité’ Creolization: from local past to international future Chapter Four The paradoxes of universalism and the ambivalence of the postcolonial condition Glissant’s aversion for universalism The ambivalent situation of overseas Caribbean French citizens Salvaging universal values Chapter Five Glissant: postmodernist apologist for neoliberal-led globalization? The ‘post-political’, ‘postmodernist’ Glissant The necessary ‘opacity’ of cultures, multilingualism and translation Chapter six Glissant’s latter-day political commitments Mémoires des esclavages (2007) Quand les murs tombent. L’Identité nationale hors la loi? (2007) Manifeste pour les “produits” de haute nécessité (2009) L’Intraitable beauté du monde. Adresse à Barack Obama (2009) Philosophie de la Relation (2009) Part Three Envisioning the twenty-first century otherwise: utopianism, anarchism and the critique of neoliberalism Chapter Seven Globalization and its critics: neoliberalism, alter-globalization and contemporary anarchism Neoliberal-led globalization: free-market deregulation, neo-imperialism and growing inequality Social protest movements vs neoliberalism and neoliberal-led globalization Anarchism, utopianism and social protest movements Chapter Eight A poetics of resistance and change: Glissant, a maître à penser for twenty-first-century dissident thought? Bibliography Works by Glissant Quand les murs tombent. L’Identité hors la loi? (Galaade, 2007).Traité du tout-monde (Gallimard, 1997). Une Nouvelle région du Index