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Édouard Glissant

    September 21, 1928 – February 3, 2011

    Édouard Glissant was a French writer, poet, philosopher, and literary critic from Martinique, widely recognized as one of the most influential figures in Caribbean thought and cultural commentary. His work delves into themes of identity, history, and culture within the postcolonial world. Glissant's writing is characterized by its exploration of complexity and multiplicity, offering profound insights into the human experience and the interconnectedness of cultures. He shaped contemporary discourse on creolization and the broader understanding of globalized identity.

    Manifestos
    Mahagony
    The Collected Poems Of Edouard Glissant
    The Fourth Century
    Poetic Intention
    The Poetics of Relation
    • 2025
    • 2022

      "Manifestos brings together for the first time in English the manifestos written by Édouard Glissant and Patrick Chamoiseau between 2000 and 2009. Composed in part in the aftermath of Barack Obama's election in 2008, the texts resonate with the current context of divided identities and criticisms of multiculturalism. The individual texts grapple with concrete historical and political moments in France, the Caribbean, and North America. Across the manifestos, as well as two collectively signed op-eds, the authors engage with socio-political aspects of climate catastrophe, resource extraction, toxicity, and neocolonialism. Throughout the collection, Glissant and Chamoiseau engage with key themes articulated through their poetic vocabulary, including Relation, globalization, globality (mondialité), anti-universalism, métissage, the tout-monde ("whole-world") and the tout-vivant ("all-living," including the relationship of humans to each other and "nature"), créolité and the creolization of the world, and the liberation from community assignations in response to individualism and neoliberal societies. Translated as the first volume in the Planetarities series with Goldsmiths Press, the themes of Manifestos resonate with the planetary as they work in response to contemporary forms of (economic) globalization, western capitalism, identity politics, and urban, digital and cosmic ecosystems, as well as the role of the poet-writer. A distinguishing feature of this publication is its interventional aspect, which prioritizes engaged scholarship and practice while demonstrating the relevance of the poetic in response to the urgencies of planetary crisis"-- Amazon

      Manifestos
    • 2021

      The multiple narrators in this novel grapple with their unrecorded history on Martinique, first as slaves and then in relation to the wider world.

      Mahagony
    • 2019

      The Collected Poems Of Edouard Glissant

      • 296 pages
      • 11 hours of reading

      This volume collects and translates--most for the first time--the nine volumes of poetry published by Édouard Glissant, one of the great writers of the twentieth century. The poems bring to life what Glissant calls "an archipela

      The Collected Poems Of Edouard Glissant
    • 2010

      Poetic Intention

      • 231 pages
      • 9 hours of reading
      4.4(48)Add rating

      This marks the publication of the first English-language translation of Poetic Intention, Glissant’s classic meditation on poetry and art. In this wide-ranging book, Glissant discusses poets, including Stéphane Mallarmé and Saint-John Perse, and visual artists, such as the Surrealist painters Matta and Wilfredo Lam, arguing for the importance of the global position of art. He states that a poem, in its intention, must never deny the “way of the world.” Capacious, inventive, and unique, Glissant’s Poetic Intention creates a new landscape for understanding the relationship between aesthetics and politics.

      Poetic Intention
    • 2001

      The Fourth Century tells of the quest by young Mathieu Béluse to discover the lost history of his country, Martinique. Aware that the officially recorded version he learned in school omits and distorts, he turns to a quimboiseur named Papa Longoué. This old man of the forest, a healer, seer, and storyteller, knows the oral tradition and its relation to the powers of the land and the forces of nature. He tells of the love-hate relationship between the Longoué and Béluse families, whose ancestors were brought as slaves to Martinique. Upon arrival, Longoué immediately escaped and went to live in the hills as a maroon. Béluse remained in slavery. The intense relationship that had formed between the two men in Africa continued and came to encompass the relations between their masters, or, in the case of Longoué, his would-be master, and their descendants. The Fourth Century closes the gap between the families as Papa Longoué, last of his line, conveys the history to Mathieu Béluse, who becomes his heir.

      The Fourth Century
    • 1997