Poetics of Relation
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POETICS OF RELATION EDOUARD" GLISSANT Poetics of Relation 3487495 translated by Betsy Wing Ann Arbor THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN PRESS Introduction and English translation copyright © by the University of Michigan 1997 Originally published in French by Gallimard, 1990. AIl rights reserved Published in the United States of America by The University of Michigan Press Manufactured in the United States of America @ Printed on acid-free paper 2010 7 6 No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher. A CIP catalog record for this book is available fram the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Glissant, Edouard, 1928- [Poétique de la relation. English] Poe tics of relation / Édouard Glissant: transIated by Betsy Wing. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-472-09629-X (cloth : alk. paper). - ISBN 0-472-06629-3 (alk. paper) 1. Martinique--Civilization-20th century. 2. Language and culture-Martinique. 3. NationaIism and literature-Martinique. 4. French language-Martinique. 5. Creole dialects, French Martinique. 6. Martinique-Dependency on France. 7. West Indies, French-Relations-France. 8. France-Relations-West Indies, French. I. Wing, Betsy. II. Title. F2081.8.G5513 1997 972.98'2-dc21 97-6997 CIP Translation of this volume was made possible bya grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities under its Fellowship Program for College Teachers and Independent Scholars. ISBN 978-0-472-09629-9 (doth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-472-06629-2 (alk. paper) for Michael Smith, assassinated poet for the archiPelagos laden with palPable death Sea is History. DEREK WALCOTT The unity is sub-marine. EDWARD KAMAU BRATHWAITE Contents 'Iranslator's Introduction, Betsy Wing xi Glossary XXI Imaginary 1 APPROACHES The Open Boat 5 Errantry, Exile Il Poetics 23 A Rooted Errantry 37 ELEMENTS Repetitions 45 Expanse and Filiation 47 Closed Place, Open Word 63 Concerning a Baroque Abroad in the World 77 Concerning the Poem's Information 81 PATHS Creolizations 89 Dictate, Decree 91 To Build the Tower 103 Transparency and Opacity III The Black Beach 121 THEORIES Relation 131 The Relative and Chaos 133 Distancing, Determining 141 That That 159 Relinked, (Relayed), Related 169 POETICS Generalization 183 That Those Beings Be Not Being lB5 For Opacity 189 Open Circle, Lived Relation 195 The Burning Beach 205 Notes 211 References 225 x Translator's Introduction Betsy Wing 'Je bâtis a roches mon langage." (1 build my language with rocks.) -Glissan t, L'Intention poétique The sturnbIing blocks of a translation frequently exist at its most productive points. Their usual first effect is frustration caused by obstinate resistance (on both sides), but, in their ever-renewed demand for conjecture, these apparent obsta cles can allow us to escape the cramped, habituaI postures of our own though t. This is the hoped-for reward of transIa tors-whose first work is to be attentive, even hopeful read ers-then, with as many premonitions of disaster as prospects of opening possibilities within their own languages, they must confront the task of rnaking these new openings avail able to new readers. AlI of Édouard Glissant's work, as a poet, novelist, play wright, or theoretician from the very beginning (Les Indes and Soleil de la conscience [1956], La Lézarde [1959]) has been concerned with exploring the possibilities of a language that wouid be fully Antillean. Such a language would be capable of writing the Antilles into history, generating a conception of time, fin ding a past and founding a future. It would escape the passivity associated with an imposed language of fixed forms (French) as weIl as the folklore traps of a language that is no longer one of material production, its vocabulary fixed because stagnant (Creole). This Antillean language would provide the means for this place and its people to relate to the world as one among equivalent entities. Carrying the work of other theorists of Caribbean self..formation, such as Fanon and Césaire, into new dimensions, Glissant sees imag ination as the force that can change mentalities; relation as the process of this change; and poe tics as a transformative mode of history. In an carly collection of essays, L1ntention jJoétique (1969), Glissant made it dear that he had no interest in rejecting the language he speaks (French); his purpose would be better served by actions within it, by interrogating il. By the pas sionate intensity of his way of being in this language, he would force the Other to know his difference. He repeatedly destabilizes "standard" French in order to decategorize understandings and establish new relations, so that the con stant transformation always at work in any living symbolic sys tem, passing into the particularity of Antillean experience, can form the vibrant grounds for a full and productive par ticipation among world cultures now and in the future. Throughout the body of his work Glissant has combined the discipline of analytical thought with a determined refusaI to accept the logic of Iinear sequences as the only productive logic. For a country whose history is composed of ruptures, to accept this linearity would imply a continued blindness to its own crazed history, its temps éPerdu, and acceptance of the "YVestern European episternological principles that daim this history as its destiny. The structure of Poetics of Relation is based more on associative principles than on any steady progress toward irrefutable proof; it is an enactment of its own poetics. Providing a sense of the new relations created in its language as a whole-its transforming ecology-was the greatest challenge for an Arnerican English version. The first and most obvious difficulty is presented by par ticular incidents in which Glissant forces new word com plexes to put forward concepts of major importance to his XlI theory. The new phrases in French, of course, are just as likely to stop readers in their tracks as abruptly as they do in English. Indeed, this is Glissant's intent-to provide sudden contact with an unforeseen relation in language, not unlike the collisions between cultures that he sees as productive of Relation. The most acute need here is to provide the same level of dues in an American English as those existing in the first version-preferably a formula both elegant and con crete but undornesticated, not subject to common linguistic usage, a mental image ready to create a new connection. Glis sant himself frequently sets the new term within its definition (though not necessarily at its first occurrence), letting con text indicate the potential for expansion in its meaning. But the slightly changing contexts and Glissant's insistence that a single term serve in every instance created difficulties not presented by words in current usage, in which local solutions are usually best. An example of this is agents d'éclat, which 1 have consistently translated as flash agents (having rejected a long list of candidates such as dazzlers, glamour mongers, etc., as suiting only one or two occurrences). This phrase indudes, but is not limited to, our category The Media, with aIl the implications of shallowness, dazzle, and hegemony that this implies for us. But, as always in Poetics of Relation, activity in a concrete world is important; physical notions of the dazzling, explosive power of this agency cannot be left out. Think: flash in the pan for shallowness, the strobing flash of momen tary glamour, the news flash in a sound byte frorn our sources. Glissant creates these rnetaphorical noun phrases to name the reality he sees emerging in the world. Frorn the point of view of the Métropole (Real France), Martinique and the other islands of the Antilles can seem to be "dust-specks on the sea," as DeGaulle, looking down from a plane, is said to have described them. To become other than dust, aggregat ing their scattered and lost histories into a concrete presence in this world-this totality-world (totalité-monde, henceforth untranslated)-the Antilles must assert their dense, opaque, xiii rock-hard existence, as do the noun-phrases Glissant uses to push at the limitations of French. Part of controlling the sub stance of one's future would lie in controlling its nomencla ture. Agents-d'éclat is a terse example of the merging of various discourses in Glissant's work. Agents-has resonance in every day language (agents de presse, etc.) but also carries overtones of political agency. Éclat (and éclater; the verb) is frequently repeated throughout Glissant's poetry and prose. Éclat in the case of agents d'éclat has a somewhat prejorative sense. It is the sort of dazzle that can cause a people to lose its footing. In numerous other instances, hm,vever, it represents the sudden movement, the explosion onto the contemporary scene of "marginal" peoples, and the possible brilliance of their future. Always it is metaphorical and poetic. Another word complex, the verbal phrase: donner-avec, relays the concept of understanding into the world of Rela tion, translating, contesting, then reconstituting its elements in a new order. The French word for understanding, compren dre, like its English cognate, is formed on the basis of the Latin word, c01nprehendere, "to seize," which is formed from the roots: con- (with) and prendere (to take). Glissant contrasts this form of understanding-appropriative, almost rapacious-with the understanding upon which Relation must be based: donner avec. Donner (to give) is meant as a generosity of perception. (In French donner' can mean "to look out tmvard.") There is also the possible sense of yielding, as a tree might "give" in a storm in order to remain standing.