Édouard Glissant, Philosopher : Heraclitus and Hegel in the Whole-World

One of the greatest writers of the late twentieth century, Édouard Glissant's body of work covers multiple genres and addresses many cogent contemporary problems, such as borders, multiculturalism, postcolonial and decolonial studies, and global humanities. Édouard Glissant, Philosopher is the first study that maps out this writer's entire work in relation to philosophy. Glissant is reputed to be a "difficult writer;" however, Alexandre Leupin demonstrates the clarity and coherence of his thinking. Glissant's rereading of Western philosophy entirely remaps its age-old questions and offers answers that have never been proposed. In doing so, Glissant offers a new way to think about questions that are at the forefront of Global Humanities today: identity, race, communities, diasporas, slavery, nation-states and nationalism, aesthetics, ethics, and the place and function of poetry and art in a globalized world. This book will elucidate Glissant's theoretical writings, not only in England and in America but also in the anglophone Caribbean, Africa, and India. Contents Abbreviations Acknowledgments Translator’s Note Chapter 1 “The immense foliage of a Louisiana oak, like a flattened palaver tree” Chapter 2 “Repetition is not an unnecessary duplication” Chapter 3 “I do not reject, I establish correlation” Chapter 4 “This need to go beyond one’s own subjectivity” Chapter 5 “Everything is in everything” The Whole-Book? “A circle whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere” Chapter 6 “Universality has no language” Chapter 7 “Bounds, breaks and sudden leaps” Chapter 8 “Only the poets” Chapter 9 “The beauty of beauty” Chapter 10 “The dispute, one of the safest and oldest reinforcements of thought” The Different Relation—The Whole-World Chapter 11 “We do not name Relation” Chapter 12 “Now there are only beings” Chapter 13 “The slave is the one who does not know, but who desires with all his strength to know” On History as Neurosis Chapter 14 “I change things, through exchanging with the other, and yet without destroying or distorting myself” Chapter 15 “And so we bring down (as if literally) the letter of the world” Chapter 16 “Imagine a thousand birds taking flight over an African lake” Chapter 17 “The continuity of the living is a spiral that does not fear to be interrupted” Chapter 18 “Yes, yes, everything is alive” Notes Bibliography Index Alexandre Leupin is Professor Emeritus in French Studies at Louisiana State University. He is the Founder and Codirector (with Charles Forsdick) of the Glissant Translation Project, which has already published three translations, among them The Baton Rouge Interviews , coauthored by Glissant and Leupin. Andrew Brown previously taught French at the University of Cambridge and is currently a freelance translator of French philosophy and social thought, including works on or by Sartre, Barthes, and Derrida. His books include A Brief History of From Plutarch to Celebs . One of the greatest writers of the late twentieth century, Edouard Glissant's body of work covers multiple genres and addresses many cogent contemporary problems, such as borders, multiculturalism, postcolonial and decolonial studies, and global humanities. This book maps out this writer's entire work in relation to philosophy