douard Glissant's most celebrated, scintillating philosophical work - which sets out a new poetic vision for the world
'We cry our cry of poetry. Our boats are open, and we sail them for everyone.'
In Poetics of Relation, his most celebrated philosophical work, douard Glissant turns the Caribbean reality of his life into a complex, energetic vision of a world in transformation. We come to see that relation in all its senses - telling, listening, connecting, and the parallel consciousness of self and surroundings - is the key to revolutionising mentalities and reshaping societies. We are not rooted, but ever-changing; we have a right to opacity and to difference, wherever we are. Told in scintillating prose, this unique exploration of language, slavery, and poetic freedom narrates an Antillean identity, but also that of the whole world.
About the Author
Douard Glissant (1928-2011) was a poet, novelist, playwright, philosopher and literary critic, and was a leading voice in postcolonial theory and Caribbean literature. Born in Martinique, he studied at the Lycee Schlcher and the Sorbonne in Paris. He was the Distinguished Professor of French at City University of New York, Graduate Center, and was the recipient of the Prix Renaudot and the Prix Charles Veillon. His works include Poetics of Relation, Caribbean Discourse, Faulkner Mississippi, and The Ripening.
Industry Reviews
One of the most important writers of the French Caribbean
-- Guardian
Poetics of Relation marks the high point of critical and cultural theory as articulated by Caribbean intellectuals. In the panoply of creative-theoretical intellectuals, Édouard Glissant occupies a place of high honor
-- Carole Boyce Davies, Cornell University
To have the opportunity to encounter Glissant’s Poetics of Relation again is a gift. Betsy Wing’s translation captures the sensual flush of a prose that invents a new language as it remakes the world. A rare text, poetic and defiant. A revelation
-- Colin Dayan, Vanderbilt University
One of the most important writers and philosophers of our time. Glissant called attention to means of global exchange that do not homogenize culture but produce a difference from which new things can emerge… I have a ritual of reading in Glissant’s books for fifteen minutes every morning… He is my most important theoretical influence
-- Hans Ulrich Obrist
Glissant’s Poetics of Relation is a deeply transformative work written with profound acuity, flair and vision. Whilst reflecting on the specific historical realities and potentialities of the Antilles, Glissant’s central concepts of "rhizomatic thought", "opacity" and "identity as a system of relation" speak urgently and directly to our contemporary moment. Betsy Wing’s translation of Glissant’s poetics powerfully captures his determination to destabilise and interrogate the French language from within and bears out Glissant’s moving observation that "Relation...is spoken multilingually"
-- Mary Jean Chan
Life – whether human or more-than-human – is a story of relations in a constant process of becoming. Yet many dominant philosophies, politics, and economics remain grounded in a totalizing and reductive individualism ill-suited to planetary co-existence. Glissant advances a dynamic, non-linear, relational perspective that can help us remake and reimagine relations at this moment of crisis and transformation
-- Merlin Sheldrake
