On the Unfolding of Édouard Glissant’s Archipelagic Thought

Abstract

This text argues for the central role of the archipelago in Édouard Glissant’s theoretical work and, conversely, for the importance of Glissant’s thought to contemporary theorizations of archipelagos. In his essays, Glissant asserted that the way of thinking born of the archipelago form was marked by unpredictability, multiplicity-in-oneness and ambiguity, which were all equally present in what Glissant termed “creolization”. Tracing a rift in Glissant scholarship between those who read his work as abidingly political (Britton, Dash) and those who perceive a troubling shift towards “postmodern” apoliticality (Bongie, Hallward), this contribution sides with the former, focusing on Glissant’s efforts to politicize the work of abstraction. It goes on to examine the positioning of Glissant’s rhizomatic philosophy of Relation with regard to the Western philosophical tradition, as seen in his engagements with Deleuze and Hegel. Finally, it concludes by holding that Glissant’s fundamental goal of using the archipelago form to call for an “insurrection of the imaginary faculties” inspires readers towards innovations in their way of conceiving of the world.

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