INNOVA Research Journal, ISSN 2477-9024  
Noviembre, 2016). Vol. 1, No.11 pp. 129-140  
(
DOI: https://doi.org/10.33890/innova.v1.11.2016.97  
URL: http://revistas.uide.edu.ec/index.php/innova/index  
Correo: innova@uide.edu.ec  
Édouard Glissant’s work, an entrance towards the “Relation”: intentions and  
projections  
El trabajo de Édouard Glissant, una entrada hacia la “Relación”: intenciones  
y proyecciones  
Carole Reine Wahnoun  
Universidad de Guayaquil, Ecuador  
Autor para correspondencia: carolewahnoun@yahoo.fr  
Fecha de recepción: 01 de Octubre de 2016 - Fecha de aceptación: 01 de Noviembre de 2016  
Resumen: La propuesta es aquí de examinar como gente y países pueden convergir en la historia  
mundial. Este artículo considera la especificidad de esta convergencia en el contexto de los escritos  
de Edouard Glissant. El pensamiento de Edouard Glissant tiene una importante resonancia con el  
concepto de la Relación que se vuelve central cuando la identidad esta percibida en una perspectiva  
universal que toma en cuenta la opacidad del Otro. Basado en gran parte sobre Le Discours antillais  
pero no limitado con este texto, analizaremos la opacidad que Glissant siempre reclamaba como  
un modo de oponer la transparencia artificial del mundo y como una condición necesaria de un  
pensamiento de la Relación. Glissant propone de leer el mundo con una otra aprehensión de la  
alteridad. El objetivo de este estudio es mostrar que la problemática de Glissant no es más sólo un  
pensado el caribeño, pero también el pensamiento de todo aquellos sobre quien no hablamos, o  
sobre quien no queremos hablar. Tan, según un pensamiento crítico, la Relación ayudará a trae  
una diversidad cultural, ética y crítica en la dinámica contemporánea de poblaciones, historia y  
memoria.  
Palabras claves: edouard glissant; el otro; relation  
Abstract: The proposal here is to examine how people and countries can converge in the world  
history. This paper considers the specificity of this convergence in the context of Edouard  
Glissant’s writings. The thought of Édouard Glissant has an important resonance with the concept  
of the Relation which gets central when the identity is perceived in a universal perspective which  
takes into account the opacity of the Other. Based largely on Le Discours antillais but not limited  
to this text, we will analyse the opacity that Glissant has always claimed as a way to oppose the  
artificial transparency of the world and as a necessary condition of a thought of the Relation.  
Glissant proposes to read the world with an other apprehension of the otherness. The objective of  
this study is to show that Glissant’problematic is not any more only a thought about the Caribbean  
but also the thought of all those about whom we do not speak, or about whom we do not want to  
speak. So, according to a critical thought, the Relation will help to brings a cultural, ethical and  
critical diversity into the contemporary dynamics of populations, history and memory.  
Key words: edouard glissant; the other; relation  
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Introduction  
Literature is receptive to every kinds of change. Literature can speak about its  
environment, with an objective description and with concepts. But the literature can also  
articulate these concepts to denounce a reality, to denounce a process, a conception of the world  
and sometimes, misrepresentations. Literature analyses this reality, in order to “take the  
measure” of a situation.  
This article will focus on Edouard Glissant’s thought as a theoretician of an approach of  
the relation in the Carribean world with the question of the Universality of world and people. As  
1
a militating writer, Glissant tried to define a poetic and an identity approach through concepts as  
the "mondialité".  
The concept of Relation and the notions which ensue from it will be analysed through the  
approach of Édouard Glissant's work which mixes these various kinds to take the measure of a  
world constantly unstable.  
From the beginning, this study affirms that to talk about the approach of alterity is  
important in order to apprehend the identity and the world in a other way. With the alterity come  
the concept of the relation. The relation drives to the positioning of different cultures and  
different thoughts. Talking about the relations drives to diversity.  
Edouard Glissant pleads for the construction of a “Rhizome” identity (addition of several  
identities, as the multiple roots of a plant without center). He is inspiring by Deleuze and  
Guattari who think the rhizome with a thought of interconnection, heterogeneousness and  
2
multiplicity."  
His approach of the relation allows him to extend the specificity of the relation. Because  
time as he indicates it "is not the lost “time” in the style of Proust but a distraught time, made by  
3
holes and lacks from the history of the West Indies and the Decolonization" .  
The relation is seen here as an invitation to think with other keys or other perspectives.  
The relation gives opportunities to react to event from another positioning. How to situate  
oneself ? Where to situate oneself to observe this world and to live in ?  
Because everything is starting from the other one, the world is starting from other one, we  
shall examine his book, The Caribbean Speech which orientate the otherness in a politic way.  
1«  
ne présume) de rien. Non point l’une sans l’autre. C’est par là que l’instant et la durée nous confortent.  
La poétique ? Précisément cette double portée, d’une théorie qui tache à conclure, d’une présence qui ne conclut  
(
Toute poétique est un palliatif d’éternité. » Édouard Glissant. (1990). Poétique de la Relation, Paris, France :  
Gallimard, p. 197.  
“Poetics? Precisely this double thrust, being a theory that tries to conclude, a presence that concludes (presumes)  
nothing. Never one without the other. That is how the instant and duration comfort us.  
Every poetics is a palliative for eternity.”  
Édouard Glissant (1997). Poetics of Relation. (translated by Betsy Wing). Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press.  
2
Gilles Deleuze et Félix Guattari (1976), Rhizome. Paris, France : Les Éditions de Minuit.  
http://bibliobs.nouvelobs.com/essais/20110203.OBS7390/sur-la-trace-d-Édouard -glissant.html  
3
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In a nomadic way, by moving outside the borders between texts, histories and reports, we  
will examine how certain concepts can be exceeded to gather some elements of the Relation.  
According to what shape the way of thinking the relation can generate an ethics of the relation  
after the advent of a domination ? It is a question of allowing to think through a speech, of other  
forms, concepts to be thought and to carry.  
Much has been written about Glissant. Every author who writes about him is approaching  
his thought with an “entrance point”. For example, Pierre Albert Castanet explains the relation of  
4
Glissant with musique and explain how the musique can simbolize the relation , Carminella  
5
Biondi examines the evolutions of Glissant poetics . Maria Christina Bathala studies the aspect  
6
of identity in the works of Glissant and of other authors . Glissant can also be analysed with a  
7
8
political aspect, resistance and political commitment .  
This work is articulating with them giving an other entrance point. This study will aim to  
expand the theoretical formulation, to extend the previous study, to have other possibility of  
exploration. This study will assess to open the problematic of Glissant’s surroundings.  
Throught the quest of a other explanation of history, is a quest of an identity. This article  
will assess the concept of « Relation » in Glissant’s work in order to establish the possibilities of  
a new construction of the alterity. Then, it will study how The Caribbean Discourse is  
articulating the concept of Relation with the concept of Alterity. Then it will develop the  
extensions of Glissant’s problematic.  
In order to bring a cultural, ethical and cultural diversity into the contemporary dynamics  
of populations, history and memory this study will argue that Glissant can be relied with the  
problematic of disappearance.  
Althought, this paper is based on textual analysis, the method is a conceptual analysis in  
order to have an other perspective, looking at the actions, events, sentences and interactions  
shown by Glissant in order to identify and discuss the problematics of a thought of the Relation.  
The concept of Relation in Glissant’s work.  
4
Pierre-Albert Castanet. (2014) Pour une poétique musicale des profondeurs. Musique et littérature, entre Amazonie  
et Caraïbes. Autour d’Edouard Glissant. Actes de la journée d’étude organisée à l’Université de Rouen en avril 2012,  
Centre d’Etudes et de Recherches Éditer/Interpréter (CEREdI), Actes de colloque N°9. (Edité par Nicolas Darbond).  
ISSN 1775-4054.  
5
Carminella Biondi. (1999). Édouard Glissant : du lieu d’origine au lieu commun. Poétiques d’Edouard Glissant.  
Jacques Chevrier (Dir). Paris, France : Presses Universitaires de l’Université Paris, France, France-Sorbonne. 1999.  
p. 133-140.  
6
Maria-Christina Bathala, Écrire, c'est lutter contre l'oubli pour se bâtir une identité, Ejournals » Cahiers ERTA »  
2
016 » Numéro 9 Actes de résistance ». p. 71 à 89.  
H. Adlai Murdoch. (1994, Summer). (Dis)Placing Marginality : Cultural Identity and Creole Resistance in Glissant  
7
and Maximin. Research in African Literatures. Indiana University Press. pp. 81-102.  
8
Celia M. Britton. (2009, November). Globalization and Political Action in the Work of Edouard Glissant. A  
Caribbean Journal of Criticism. Duke University Press. pp. 1-13.  
Revista de la Universidad Internacional del Ecuador. URL: https://www.uide.edu.ec/  
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The thought of Édouard Glissant deliberately takes place under the sign of the thought of  
the relation. There is relation when there is sphere of influence of the thought, the identity, the  
otherness in a universal perspective taking into account the opacity of other one.  
The Glissant’s thought is very charismatic concerning the topics of memory, history,  
metissage but especially with the concept of Relation.  
The concept of Relation in Glissant’s work is an approach to observe a way of life, a way  
of thinking and to propose other kind of dialogues between lands, peoples, cultures, idioms,  
arts… The relation is a point of departure of a model of communication, a way to communicate  
with others in the impossibility of the unity of origins and history. The relation is a connection  
which articulates past and present in the human identity.  
With the Relation, it is supposed to overcome the simplicity of the globalisation in order to  
apprehend the complexity of a world with different and complex history and alterity. Glissant is  
thinking about the question of living in a place and of building an identity from the language. The  
place, as the language, will determine the movement of the thought.  
«
Why the poetical aspiration of the world ? Why not the intimate thing ? In the fight  
between the Same and the Diverse, the presence and the act of the villages come today to stress  
the irremediable role of the Other. The complex arduous, unforeseeable Relation is the strongest  
calling of the poetics for coming. The shout of the World turns word.”9  
The floating of the world is taken into account in its unseizability, there is no congruence  
between elements, histories and human beings. But this lack of congruence brings a specific  
form of relation. "In the Relation, the mutual influence of the identities, individual and  
collective, requires a real autonomy of each of these identities. The Relation is not confusion or  
dilution. I can change by exchanging with the other one, without losing me nevertheless nor  
becoming distorted. That is why we need borders, either to stop us, but to exercise this free  
passage of the same to the other one, to underline the marvel of here there."1  
0
To Glissant, the frontier of the Relation is a place of transformation. The exchange in  
Relation is a construction, a passage.  
Signs of domination in The Caribbean Discourse  
9
Édouard Glissant. (2015). El discourso antillano (translated by Aura Marina Boadas, Amelia Hernández, Lourdes  
Arencibia Rodriguez, Ana Kovacs, Ángela Morales, Jesús David Cuberlo and Rubén Casado) Guayaquil : UArtes  
Ediciones. p. 12. "¿Por qué la aspiración poética del mundo? ¿Por qué no lo íntimo? En la lucha entre lo Mismo y lo  
Diverso, la presencia y el acto de los pueblos vienen hoy a recalcar el papel irremediable del Otro. La Relación  
compleja, ardua, imprevisible es la llama la más fuerte de las poéticas por venir. El grito del Mundo se vuelve palabra.  
"
10  
Édouard Glissant. (2006, octobre). Il n’est frontière qu’on n’outrepasse in Le Monde diplomatique.  
http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2006/10/GLISSANT/13999 « Dans la Relation, l’influence mutuelle des identités,  
individuelles et collectives, requiert une autonomie réelle de chacune de ces identités. La Relation n’est pas confusion  
ou dilution. Je peux changer en échangeant avec l’autre, sans me perdre pourtant ni me dénaturer. C’est pourquoi  
nous avons besoin des frontières, non plus pour nous arrêter, mais pour exercer ce libre passage du même à l’autre,  
pour souligner la merveille de l’ici-là. »  
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The Caribbean Discourse, published in France in 1981, reveals a lot of the Glissant’s  
commitment against Colonialism. It is a combination of articles written during 10 years.  
As the presentation of this books, this essay is about Martinican case : what and where  
are the energies in Martinican cultures ? Where, what are they with plantations systems,  
pyramidal system of populations (on the base, African and hindous, at the top, European people),  
the creolisation as a cultural phenomenoneon, syncretism of civilizations. This book aims to  
confront the different ideas in order to show that the Caribbean communication can have a  
composit culture to create without giving up to the past they know (because they don’t know  
much about their past). Caribe are a paradoxical microcosm with both a very strong internal  
culture and a very strong assimilation to France. This book shows how Relation is concerning  
every kind of population.  
Glissant works on mode of the repetition, conceived as a rhythm but also as a shape of  
resistance. Later, in his book Poetic of the Relation (1990), he completes his thought. He  
constantly insists on the mode of subjectivity designed as pacifist instrument to fight against the  
globalization and also on the specificity of every posture without setting up him as intrinsic  
mode (against the identity roots).  
Glissant shows the question of the return is hindered by the permanent modes of  
compulsory domination for the peoples. The domination works in an intrinsic link with the  
assimilation: a model is required and each owes to follow it.  
In the course of times and of the history, the assimilation works to such a point that any  
possibility of return - even though it sets up itself as an obsession in the unconscious of any  
displaced population - becomes difficult, even more, artificial. Because « Coming back is to  
dedicate the permanency, the non-relation. The Return will be preached by the sectarian ones of  
One. »11  
We attend then a form of implicit deflection of rules established on a mode of domination  
which is shown as a mode of hypocrisy. There are not words anymore, nor of acts to show the  
domination because the dominant people ask for a "assimilation".  
There is a collective unconscious of the acceptance of the domination which distorts all  
the possible of social relationships. Every action, will, vague desire of the Caribbean people,  
finds itself in this track of acceptance of the domination.  
Glissant establishes a difference between what he calls the “same” and the “diverse”. For  
him the same is the culture which comes from the exterior of a nation and wishes to erase and to  
replace the internal culture. The “diverse” is an expression of local, internal cultures and an  
expression of alterity of each person. For Glissant, writing is the universal sign of the same and  
orality belongs to the diverse : “Estoy por creer que lo escrito es la huella universalizante de lo  
11  
Édouard Glissant. El discourso antillano, p. 27. “Retornar es consagrar la permanencia, la no-relación. El Retorno  
será predicado por los sectarios del Uno. ”  
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1
2
Mismo, ahí donde lo oral sería el gesto organizado de lo Diverso.” .To him, the writer has to  
insert orality in writing in order not to be trapped in the only literary aspects.  
Various factors can explain the domination, the lack of organized culture does not allow a  
minimal production of a system, the official language aims to erase the mother tong and convert  
in a “natural language” : “The drama begins there where the absence of a cultural preexisting  
context does not allow that a village ambush in a cultural front of resistance, And where an  
autonomous System of production has been kept. The maternal oral language meets restricted or  
suppressed by the official language, even and especially when this one tends to turn into natural  
language it means what I am called it communities " caught. ” 1  
3
We can give an interesting example of what remains of a dominated cultures, folklore  
which, in spite of his interest can be only seen as an entertainment medium and not allows a  
collective act to build. Glissant is strongly opposed to folklore : “We have to vomite el “folklore”  
(
a probative folklore can develop itself from collective mentality who is not alienated.) and  
14  
oppose to him in cultural action, concerted forms of popular reflexions.”  
Let us now examine how Glissant presents and explains the opacity as a mode of  
resistance.  
At the beginning of The Caribbean Discurse, Glissant claims :  
We demand the right for the opacity. By what our tension to exist everything heavily  
“
joins the global drama of the Relation: the impetus of the peoples cancelled who set today  
against the universal of the transparency, been imperative by the West, a deaf multiplicity of the  
1
5
Miscellaneous.” and to caution against the notion of a single community enclosed upon itself  
within its own opacity.  
Obscurantism or apartheid is not the opacity. Opacity is a mode of resistance. It aims to  
go further the appearance of a true which is not true and shows that every detail can be taken into  
account.  
1
1
2
3
Édouard Glissant, El discourso antillano, p. 184.  
Édouard Glissant. El discourso antillano. p. 186. “El drama empieza allí donde la ausencia de un contexto cultural  
preexistente no permite que un pueblo se embosque en un frente cultural de resistencia, y donde se ha mantenido un  
Sistema autónomo de producción. La lengua maternal oral se ve constreñida o reprimida por la lengua oficial, incluso  
y sobre todo cuando esta tiende a convertirse en lengua natural se trata de lo que lo llamo comunidades “atrapadas”  
14  
Édouard Glissant. El discourso antillano. p. 203. “Hay que vomitar el “folclor” (un folclor probatorio solo se  
desarolla a partir de una mentalidad colectiva no alienada) y oponerle en la acción cultural formas concertada de  
reflexión popular.”  
15  
«
Nous réclamons le droit à l'opacité. Par quoi notre tension pour tout dru exister rejoint le drame planétaire de la  
Relation: l'élan des peuples néantisés qui opposent aujourd'hui à l'universel de la transparence, imposée par l'Occident,  
une multiplicité sourde du Divers. » / “Exigimos el derechos a la opacidad con el cual nuestro empeño en existir con  
reciedumbre tiene el alcance del drama planetario de la Relación : el impulso de los pueblos anulados que hoy oponen  
a lo universal de la transparencia, impuesto por Occidente una multiplicad sorda del Diverso.”Édouard Glissant.  
(
1981). Le Discours antillais, Paris, France : Éditions du Seuil, p. 11-12 / Édouard Glissant, El discourso antillano, p.  
9
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Glissant writes : "I demand for all the right for opacity. It is not necessary for me any  
more to understand the other one, that means to reduce him to the model of my own  
1
6
transparency, to live with this other one or build with him. "  
For Glissant, Opacité is for every communities, those who have to bear the weight of  
their history and those whom the colonization eliminated their own history. A communication  
has to be established between those different communities considering the opacity of the modes  
of relation without replacing the relation in a global model which would cancel all the  
specificities of the relation and of the communities. The opacity is articulated with the diversity  
of the communication, the diversity of langages, the diversity of the relation.  
Glissant evokes the metaphor of the forest, designed as the metaphor of the opacity which  
would resist in any shape of universal classification aiming at a globalization.  
The opacity finds itself in the silence of what is not directly given to see. The relation is  
made in this dynamics: when the transparency of the world and its opacity are in confrontation in  
a frontal way.  
Relation and Alterity in Glissant’s thought  
Glissant shows how the Caribbean people have to work from the domination which was  
made imperative by the other one. Other one imposes its though, the thought of Glissant builds  
itself from the colonialist aspect. The thought of Glissant builds itself from the consideration of  
the temporality of the weaknesses of the world with an appropriation resumed by the modelling  
from the relationship to the other one. His vision of the history, as that of the development of the  
world allows a political action to emerge.  
Glissant is opposed to the globalization economist of identity-relation and to the  
identities-roots. He also thinks about the thought of the shiver (fragile, uncertain but  
corresponding to the world, uncertain and discontinuity) by opposition to the thought of systems.  
He is also discussing the thought of the shiver (fragile, uncertain but corresponding to the  
changing world), a thought of interval and discontinuity, by opposition to the thought of system  
(with ruptures).  
From the perception of Glissant for a multiple history, the temporality of which builds  
itself on the mode of the crack, Glissant proposes another reading of the world with spaces which  
would design as fixed, motionless in the middle of a zone excessively bounded Glissant shows  
two faces of the world which stand out without complementing themselves. The shiver  
constitutes the world and opposes the motionless system which we set up ceaselessly. Glissant  
sets up this shiver as a concept : « The fixed identities become harmful to the sensibility of the  
contemporary man committed (hired) in a world-chaos and living in creolized companies  
(societies). Identity-relation, or "identity-rhizome" as called it Gilles Deleuze, seems more  
16  
«
Je réclame pour tous le droit à l'opacité. II ne m'est plus nécessaire de "comprendre" l'autre, c'est-à-dire de le  
réduire au modèle de ma propre transparence, pour vivre avec cet autre ou construire avec lui. » ". Édouard Glissant.  
1996). Introduction a une poétique du divers Paris, France : Gallimard. pp. 71—72  
(
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adapted to the situation. It is difficult to admit, it fills us with fears of questioning the unity of  
our identity, the hard and unwavering core of our person, an identity closed on herself (itself),  
being afraid of the strangeness, associated with a language, a nation, a religion, sometimes an  
ethnic group, a race, a tribe, a clan, an entity defined well with which we become identified. But  
we have to change our point of view on the identities, as on our relation in the other one.  
We have to build an unstable, moving, creative, fragile personality, in the crossroads of  
one and others. Identity-relation. It is a very interesting experience, because we consider  
generally authorized to speak to the other one from the point of view of a fixed identity. Defined  
well. Pure. Atavistic. Now, it is impossible, even for the former colonized which try to cling to  
their past or their ethnic group. And it fills us with fears and with tremors to speak without  
certainty, but enriches us considerably.”17  
To evoke another form of interbreeding, in outlines unstable and not bounded in the  
Contemporary world Glissant speaks about "creolization”:  
"The creolization is the connected of several cultures or at least several elements of  
different cultures, in a place of the world, with for resultant a new datum, we would plan what  
will give an interbreeding, but not a creolization. This one and that one, in the universe of the  
atavistic, were considered for producing a dilution of the being, a degeneration. Another  
unforeseen is that this prejudice fades slowly, even if it persists in motionless and barricaded  
places. "18  
Everything in the world is constantly moving and reality is a constant transformation.  
Deleuze and Guattari are an interesting reference point here because, as Glissant, they show that  
every concept has a multiple, even a kaleidoscopic approach. The objective of a theory of a  
Relation is to facilitate a thought of internal resistance, to give other possibilities of thinking a  
nation.  
With Deleuze and Guattari, the relation is getting a rhizome which has to see with  
nomadism. In this specific area of the relation, every behaviour is possible and is taking into  
17  
Extract of the program of the Carbet prize of the Caribbean chaired by Édouard Glissant, 2007. « Les identités  
fixes deviennent préjudiciables à la sensibilité de l'homme contemporain engagé dans un monde-chaos et vivant  
dans des sociétés créolisées. L'Identité-relation, ou l'"identité-rhizome" comme l'appelait Gilles Deleuze, semble  
plus adaptée à la situation. C'est difficile à admettre, cela nous remplit de craintes de remettre en cause l'unité de  
notre identité, le noyau dur et sans faille de notre personne, une identité refermée sur elle-même, craignant  
l'étrangeté, associée à une langue, une nation, une religion, parfois une ethnie, une race, une tribu, un clan, une entité  
bien définie à laquelle on s'identifie. Mais nous devons changer notre point de vue sur les identités, comme sur notre  
relation à l'autre.  
Nous devons construire une personnalité instable, mouvante, créatrice, fragile, au carrefour de soi et des autres. Une  
Identité-relation. C'est une expérience très intéressante, car on se croit généralement autorisé à parler à l'autre du  
point de vue d'une identité fixe. Bien définie. Pure. Atavique. Maintenant, c'est impossible, même pour les anciens  
colonisés qui tentent de se raccrocher à leur passé ou leur ethnie. Et cela nous remplit de craintes et de tremblements  
de parler sans certitude, mais nous enrichit considérablement. »  
18  
Édouard Glissant. (1997). Traité du Tout-Monde (Poétique IV). Paris, France : Gallimard. p. 37. « La créolisation  
est la mise en contact de plusieurs cultures ou au moins de plusieurs éléments de cultures distinctes, dans un endroit  
du monde, avec pour résultante une donnée nouvelle, totalement imprévisible par rapport à la somme ou à la simple  
synthèse de ces éléments. On prévoirait ce que donnera un métissage, mais non pas une créolisation. Celle-ci et  
celui-là, dans l’univers de l’atavique, étaient réputés produire une dilution de l’être, un abâtardissement. Un autre  
imprévu est que ce préjugé s’efface lentement, même s’il s’obstine dans des lieux immobiles et barricadés. »  
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account the possibilities of the relation. The important is how we are acting in this system, a  
system often provisory but also always growing: “The rhizome is not nomadic, it takes root even  
for the airs (sometimes it is an epiphyte): but the fact of not being a vine-stock predisposes it "to  
"
accept" the inconceivable of the different thing: the New outbreak always possible that is to the  
19  
side. ”  
Extensions of Glissant’s problematic  
The research reached the conclusion that the approach of the Relation in Glissant’s work  
can concern any situation of domination.  
“
It happens that the mechanisms of visible oppression are directed here according to the  
processes of alienation odd number perceived and it in an inextricable way of such luck that the  
apparent" history actually (indeed) is the superstructure of a history syncopated in  
uncontrollable segments.  
"
To take again the link with a history of the people martiniqueño is to help to suppress,  
simultaneously, the oppression makes concrete and the global inadvertent alienation. Both  
operations are alone one. We cannot attack the concrete oppression if to stir the mental  
oppression into action here and vice versa. Nationalism with what has from negative to excel  
2
0
(overcome)) constitutes stage unstoppable and includes also cultural battle.”  
The various problematics are shown to validate the assertion that alienation has an  
history. Everywhere where there is a domination in particular in Latin America as for example in  
th  
Santiago de Cuba during the attack of Cuartel Moncadathe on July 26 1953 and Matouba Fort  
where Louis Delgrès and his men committed suicide massively in 1802 not to be captured by the  
French people, there is then itself an imaginary poetics of a New World.  
The West Indies become then a mirror a synecdoche or a metonymy of certain aspects of  
Latin America. Speaking about Latin America, he writes: “All this America is living throught  
2
1
three heritages: the aborigen, the african, the western one.”  
But the language in the West Indies is opposed to the construction of a landscape in Latin  
America. Contrary to constructed towns in Latin America, the eloquence of Martinican people  
19Édouard Glissant, El discourso antillano, p. 189. “El rizoma no es nómada, se arraiga hasta por los aires (a veces  
es una epifita) : pero el hecho de no ser una cepa lo predispone a “aceptar” lo inconcebible de lo otro : el brote Nuevo  
siempre posible que está al lado.”  
20Édouard Glissant, El discourso antillano, p. 196. “Ocurre que los mecanismos de opresión visible están aquí  
dirigidos según los procesos de alienación non percibidos y eso de manera inextricable de tal suerte que la historia  
“aparente” en realidad es la superestructura de una historia sincopada en segmentos incontrolables.  
Retomar el vínculo con una historia del pueblo martiniqueño es contribuir a suprimir, a la vez, la opresión concreta  
y la alienación global inadvertida. Ambas operaciones son solo una. No podemos combatir la opresión concreta si  
dinamizar aquí la opresión mental y viceversa. El nacionalismo con lo que tiene de negativo a superar) constituye una  
etapa imparable y abarca también la batalla cultural.  
21Édouard Glissant, El discourso antillano, p. 216. “(…) toda esa America vive tres legados : el indígena, el africano,  
el occidental”  
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are not useful to them. But the problem is deeper: domination is visible but we don’t know how,  
there are missing elements which don’t allow to construct a solution.  
The vision of Glissant can also get closer to the problem of the missing persons. I mean  
by "missing persons" those whose track we have no more but also the trace of whose we lost. It  
is a question of seeing those whom we do not see, those whom we did not see, even that we too  
much saw at a certain time or that we stigmatized.  
Benjamin’s thought means an aperture in the constance of the world, the “passage”. The  
scream can raise into words, Walter Benjamin talks about the angel of history: « There is a  
picture of Klee which is entitled Angelus Novus. He represents an angel who seems to have  
intention to go away of what his look seems riveted. The eyes are opened wide, his open mouth,  
its spread wings. Such is the aspect that the angel of the history has to have inevitably. He has  
the face turned to the past. Where appears in front of us a continuation of events, he only sees  
one disaster, which does not stop accumulating ruins on ruins and throws them to his feet. He  
would be willing to linger, to wake the deaths and to gather the losers. But of the paradise blow a  
storm which took itself in its wings, so strong as the angel cannot close them anymore. This  
storm pushes him presently towards the future on which he turns the back, however that up to the  
2
2
sky in front of him accumulate ruins. This storm is what we call the progress. »  
Conclusion  
The objective of this paper was to demonstrate the Edouard Glissant’s important  
contribution to the role of the other with the field of relation. Although, this study was only an  
approach of different themes, it does raises some problematics about the prolongations of the  
Glissant’s thought. The analysis demonstrates how literature, philosophy and history can be  
joined to produce a new consciousness and a new understanding about the Relation.  
Glissant works about the connection between people and culture to think a society who is  
present to its own history:"We frequent the borders, not as the signs and the factors of the  
impossible, but as places of the passage and the transformation." 2  
3
We are situated here in the zone of the history before entering the dimension of the  
reality. A reality which is going to bring us somewhere else different from what we thought. The  
22  
Walter Benjamin. (2010). Über den Begriff der Geschichte IX. Frankfurt am Main : Suhrkamp.  
Walter Benjamin. (2000). Sur le concept d’histoire (IX, Œuvres III traduit par Maurice de Gandillac). Paris, France  
Gallimard. « Il existe un tableau de Klee qui s’intitule «Angelus Novus». Il représente un ange qui semble sur le  
:
point de s’éloigner de quelque chose qu’il fixe du regard. Ses yeux sont écarquillés, sa bouche ouverte, ses ailes  
déployées. C’est à cela que doit ressembler l’Ange de l’Histoire. Son visage est tourné vers le passé. Là où nous  
apparaît une chaîne d’événements, il ne voit, lui, qu’une seule et unique catastrophe, qui sans cesse amoncelle ruines  
sur ruines et les précipite à ses pieds. Il voudrait bien s’attarder, réveiller les morts et rassembler ce qui a été démembré.  
Mais du paradis souffle une tempête qui s’est prise dans ses ailes, si violemment que l’ange ne peut plus les refermer.  
Cette tempête le pousse irrésistiblement vers l’avenir auquel il tourne le dos, tandis que le monceau de ruines devant  
lui s’élève jusqu’au ciel. Cette tempête est ce que nous appelons le progrès ». p. 434  
23  
Edouard Glissant. (2006, octobre). Il n’est frontière qu’on n’outrepasse. Le Monde diplomatique. Repéré à  
http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2006/10/GLISSANT/13999« Nous fréquentons les frontières, non pas comme  
signes et facteurs de l’impossible, mais comme lieux du passage et de la transformation. »  
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relation will continue in this movement of thought. We shall find the other one through its  
disappearance, through its sphere of influence.  
The world of other one beyond the normative fixedness of the release of the confinement.  
The relation allows to bring words to change the living. This paper also highlights that literature  
is going to work up on this situation to understand it and also to struggle with it : it can happen  
that the work is not written for anybody, but to demonstrate the complex The relation aims to be  
in a new possibility to considerate the human being. Mechanisms of the frustration and the  
infinite varieties of the oppression. To demand that in this case it is at once apprehensible is  
equivalent to make the same mistake that so many visitors, after passing two days in Martinique,  
try to explain to his inhabitants the problems of his own country and the solutions that they  
2
4
should be put into practice. "  
In this case it is becoming an emergency to cross and open frontiers between orality and  
writing. Perceptions must change in order the Relation that Glissant wishes and a kind of  
communication without domination can exist: " (…) The writing is oralising. The "literature"  
recovers of this luck the "real thing" that seemed to circumscribe it and to limit it. The Caribbean  
Discourse is articulating the same on the sparkle of the original shout that for the patience of the  
2
5
landscape recognized, or for the imposition of lived paces.”  
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