12 quotes
Having a bit of earth amounts to nothing when the earth as a whole does not belong to everyone. ("Dry Season at La Toufaille")
Le Quatrième Siècle (1964)
In creolization, you can change, you can be one with the other, you can change with the other while being yourself, you are not one, you are multiple, and you are yourself. You are not lost because you are a multiple. You are not broken apart, because you are multiple.
One World in Relation: Édouard Glissant in Conversation with Manthia Diawara (2011)
To move from the oral to the written is to immobilise the body, to take control (to possess it). ("Poetics")
Caribbean Discourse: Selected Essays (1981)
For me, the arrival is the moment where all the components of humanity ... consent to the idea that it is possible to be one and multiple at the same time; that you can be yourself and the other; that you can be the same and the different.
One World in Relation: Édouard Glissant in Conversation with Manthia Diawara (2011)
We clamor for the right to opacity for everyone. (p. 194)
Poetics of Relation (1990)
Sameness is sublimated difference; Diversity is accepted difference. ("National Literatures")
Caribbean Discourse: Selected Essays (1981)
Roots make the commonality of errantry and exile, for in both instances roots are lacking. We must begin with that. ("Errantry, Exile")
Poetics of Relation (1990)
What is here is open, as much as this there. (p. 190)
Poetics of Relation (1990)
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. (p. 190)
Poetics of Relation (1990)
Pythagore Celat went around loudly trumpeting "we" though there was not one soul who could guess what he meant by it. (beginning of "Trace of the Time Before")
La case du commandeur (1981)
Agree not merely to the right to difference but, carrying this further, agree also to the right to opacity that is not enclosure within an impenetrable autarchy but subsistence within an irreducible singularity. (p. 190)
Poetics of Relation (1990)
The tremulous thought is not a thought out of fear, not scared thinking. It is thought that is opposed to systematic thinking. We understand the world better if we tremble with it. Because the world trembles every which way. It trembles organically and geologically. It also trembles with the climate. But the world also trembles through the relations that we have with each other.
One World in Relation (2010)