Edouard Glissant Quotes
Edouard Glissant was a Martinican philosopher, novelist, and poet, one of the founding figures of Caribbean philosophy, and the most original theorist of creolization in late-twentieth-century thought. The Poetics of Relation reframed the modern history of the Atlantic as the long emergence of a relational consciousness in which the singular and the multiple, the rooted and the errant, are no longer in opposition. The quotes below are attributed to Edouard Glissant, organized by topic.
Edouard Glissant on Freedom
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Attributed to Edouard Glissant:
“The right to opacity is the right not to be reduced to the categories of the other.”
Edouard Glissant on God
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“Pythagore Celat went around loudly trumpeting "we" though there was not one soul who could guess what he meant by it. (beginning of "Trace of the Time Before")”
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Edouard Glissant on Knowledge
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“beginning of Mahagony (1987 novel), translated from the French into English by Betsy Wing (2001)”
Trees that live a long time exude mystery and magic. As if they were creating strong potions of happiness and calamity in their ripe old age, stirring together heaven and animal nature, and using these mixtures to control us and come to our aid. An herb's magic is perishable; a potion made from it can only work on bodies, be useful for love or for doing harm to others. But a tree, though more rese -
“beginning of Chapter 1”
All this wind," said Papa Longoué, "all this wind about to come up, nothing you can do, you wait for it to come up to your hands, then your mouth, your eyes, your head. As if a man was only there to wait for the wind, to drown, yes, you understand, to drown himself for good in all this wind like the endless ocean..." -And one can't say, he went on thinking (on his haunches in front of the child), -
“Our intention in this work was to pull together all levels of experience . This piling-up is the most suitable technique for exposing a reality that is itself being scattered. Its evolution is like a repetition of a few obsessions that take root , tied to realities that keep slipping away . The intellectual journey is destined to have a geographical itinerary, through which the "intention" within the Discourse explores its space and into which it is woven.”
beginning of Introduction: From this discourse on a discourse -
“beginning of Introduction: From this discourse on a discourse”
Our intention in this work was to pull together all levels of experience . This piling-up is the most suitable technique for exposing a reality that is itself being scattered. Its evolution is like a repetition of a few obsessions that take root , tied to realities that keep slipping away . The intellectual journey is destined to have a geographical itinerary, through which the "intention" within -
“Sameness is sublimated difference; Diversity is accepted difference. ("National Literatures")”
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“To move from the oral to the written is to immobilise the body, to take control (to possess it). ("Poetics")”
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Edouard Glissant on Love
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“It is difficult for a French Caribbean individual to be the brother, the friend, or simply the associate or fellow countryman of Fanon . Because, of all the French Caribbean intellectuals, he is the only one to have acted on his ideas…to take full responsibility for a complete break. (Reversion and Diversion," p. 25)”
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Edouard Glissant on Mind
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Attributed to Edouard Glissant:
“Identity is not a root but a relation.”
Edouard Glissant on Nature
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“Having a bit of earth amounts to nothing when the earth as a whole does not belong to everyone. ("Dry Season at La Toufaille")”
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Edouard Glissant on Politics
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Attributed to Edouard Glissant:
“I write to you from a place where the world has always already been creolized.”
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Attributed to Edouard Glissant:
“Creolization is not the loss of identity; it is the discovery that identity is born in encounter.”
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Attributed to Edouard Glissant:
“Whole-world thinking is what comes after empire.”
Edouard Glissant on Time
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“beginning of Introduction: From a presentation distant in space and time”
From the persistent myth of the paradise islands to the deceptive appearance of overseas departments, it seemed that the French West Indies were destined to be always in an unstable relationship with their own reality. It is as if these countries were condemned to never make contact with their true nature, since they were paralyzed by being scattered geographically and also by one of the most pern