Poetics of Relation Quotes

“We know ourselves as part and as crowd, in an unknown that does not terrify. We cry our cry of poetry. Our boats are open, and we sail them for everyone.”
― Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation

“An aesthetics of the earth?... Yes. But an aesthetics of disruption and intrusion. Finding the fever of passion for the ideas of 'environment' (which I call surroundings) and 'ecology', both apparently such futile notions in these landscapes of desolation. Imagining the idea of love for the earth - so ridiculously inadequate or else frequently the basis for such sectarian intolerance - with all the strength of charcoal fires or sweet syrup.

Aesthetics of rupture and connection.

Because that is the crux of it, and almost everything is said in pointing out that under no circumstances could it ever be a question of transforming land into territory again. Territory is the basis of conquest. Territory requires filiation be planted and legitimated. Territory is defined by its limits, and they must be expanded. A land henceforth has no limits. That is the reason it is worth defending against every form of alienation.

Aesthetics of a variable continuum, of an invariant discontinuum.”
― Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation

“Opacities can coexist and converge, weaving fabrics. To understand these truly one must focus on the texture of the weave and not on the nature of its components. For the time being, perhaps, give up this old obsession with discovering what lies at the bottom of natures. There would be something great and noble about initiating such a movement referring not to Humanity but to the exultant divergence of humanities. Thought of self and thought of other here become obsolete in their duality…. What is here is open, as much as this there. I would be incapable of projecting from one to the other. This-here is the weave and it weaves no boundaries.”
― Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation

“Relation cannot be 'proved' because its totality is not approachable. But it can be imagined, conceivable in the transport of thought. The accumulation of examples aims at perfecting a never complete description of the processes of relation, not circumscribing them or giving legitimacy to some impossible global truth. In this sense the most harmonious analysis is the one that poetically describes flying or diving. description is no proof: it simply adds something to Relation insofar as the latter is a synthesis-genesis that is never complete.”
― Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation

“This is why we stay with poetry. And despite our consenting to aIl the indisputable technologies; despite seeing the political leap that must be managed, the horror of hunger and ignorance, torture and massacre to be conquered, the full load of knowledge to be tamed, the weight of every piece of machinery that we shall finally control, and the exhausting flashes as we pass from one era to another-from forest to city, from story to computer-at the bow there is still sornething we now share: this murmur, cloud or rain or peaceful smoke. We know ourselves as part and as crowd, in an unknown that does not terrify. We cry our cry of poetry. ”
― Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation

“Is there no valid language for Chaos? Or does Chaos only produce a sort of language that reduces and annihilates? Does its echo recede into a sabir of sabirs at the level of a roar?”
― Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation