Poetics of Relation, Animesh Rai!

When I first heard Edouard Glissant, he was being interviewed on France Culture Radio. I found him riveting. Was very intrigued by his association of geophysics with thoughts, a subject I am passionate about. I could not place his accent. It was neither from Southern, nor from Northern France. Nor Belgian, certainly not Swiss. After listening to the program, I did what we all do in 2009: checked him out on the Internet. Glissant is from Martinique! Made total sense! Ethnic minorities and colonies have suffered from European cultural imperialism, not to mention economic, political, and more. In fact, I share his questioning of some aspects of anthropology which have always struck me as inappropriate. Culture should be lived, experienced with body and soul, and not studied under a microscope. Even if Claude Lévi-Strauss did express respect for other cultures and rejected the notion of primitivism.

As a woman I feel that I suffer from the domination of male thought in our culture, its systematic approach is alien to my intellectual and imaginary process. There is a certain assumption that thought and philosophy are produced in the higher spheres, untouched by material reality. They are influenced not only by history and politics but also by geography and sexuality. Glissant is interested more in the relation between Europe, France in particular, and the colonies, and less interested than me, for obvious reasons, in the sexual aspect of this intellectual domination. - I think. As I have not yet read the whole book yet! The writing is beautiful. Difficult. That brings me to a very exciting news: Animesh Rai, a scholar and professor who has studied Glissant and whose research and thinking is close to Glissant's, will soon make some contributions to this blog. He will be able to speak on Glissant much better than I. Am not yet disclosing the subject of these entries to maintain suspense!

Brought to you by - Arabella Hutter