The Poetics of Relation

The Martinican writer and public figure Édouard Glissant (1928–2011) gained wide international recognition as one of the founders of postcolonial thought. His extensive legacy includes poems, novels, essays, journal articles, and public speeches as a longtime member of UNESCO.

The protean corpus of Glissant's texts is permeated by several overarching themes: creolization — a mutually enriching, albeit not conflict-free, blending of languages and cultures; overcoming the dilemma of universality and singularity in the fluid perspective of the Whole World; infinite wandering as a path of poetic and political self-realization of the individual. All of this converges in the concept of Relation — an unstable, ever-invented connection that plays the role of the driving force of being in Glissant's philosophy. 

The texts in this collection — the author's first book in Russian translation — illuminate the crystal of Relation, showcasing its different facets: losses and gains, wounds and unions, doubts and discoveries.