Treatise on the Whole-World
1997
First Published
4.22
Average Rating
200
Number of Pages
This exciting, challenging book covers a wide range of subject matter, but all linked together through the key ideas of diversity and ‘Relation’. It sees our modern world, shaped by immigration and the aftermath of colonization, as a multiplicity of different communities interacting and evolving together, and argues passionately against all political and philosophical attempts to impose uniformity, universal or absolute values. This is the ‘Whole-World’, which includes not only these objective phenomena but also our consciousness of them. Our personal identities are not fixed and self-sufficient but formed in ‘Relation’ through our contacts with others. Glissant constantly stresses the unpredictable, ‘chaotic’ nature of the world, which, he claims, we must adapt to and not attempt to limit or control. ‘Creolization’ is not restricted to the Creole societies of the Caribbean but describes all societies in which different cultures with equal status interact to produce new configurations. This perspective produces brilliant new insights into the politicization of culture, but also language, poetry, our relationship to place and to landscapes, globalization, history, and other topics. The book is not written in the style conventionally associated with essays, but is a mixture of argument, proclamation, and poetic evocations of landscapes, lifestyles and people.
Avg Rating
4.22
Number of Ratings
32
5 STARS
31%
4 STARS
59%
3 STARS
9%
2 STARS
0%
1 STARS
0%
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Author
Édouard Glissant
Author · 18 books
Édouard Glissant was a French writer, poet, philosopher, and literary critic from Martinique. He is widely recognised as one of the most influential figures in Caribbean thought and cultural commentary.
