Date: Tue, 7 Apr 1998 00:42:19 -0400
From: Keith Alan Sprouse <kas3f-AT-virginia.edu>
Subject: Glissant, Deleuze and Guattari


At 04:19 PM 4/6/98 -0400, Lisa wrote:
>I'm particularly interested in how Deleuze fits into this. Since we were
>talking about Glissant a while back, it would be interesting to think
>about how Rhizomes influenced Glissant's notions in the Poetique de la
>relation, and whether any of this other stuff necessarily seeped through
>to Glissant's work. What are your ideas on the subject?

I think that it's interesting to note that Glissant isn't the only one to be
quite heavily influenced by D and G. Ben=EDtez-Rojo, with his "Plantation
machine," also shows a heavy debt, although he doesn't try to work the
rhizome metaphor. And then there are those who have tried to work out a
"mangrove" version of the rhizome (or would that be a rhizomatic version of
the mangrove), some even in fairly pop culture forms (here I'm thinking of
Chico Science, the Brazilian band from Bahia).

As far as my take on Glissant, here I'm going to risk being seen as a
pompous windbag for falling prey to the self-cite, but I still pretty much
agree with what I wrote in a piece on Glisant and Ben=EDtez-Rojo a couple of
years ago. The essay itself, like so much academic writing, was quite marked
by its occasion (more explanatory than I would have liked and limited to the
primary texts without being able to situate them within a larger framework,
an essay that a well-known scholar contributed to the same volume).
Nonetheless, I hope you find it of some interest. Here's a relevant snipet:

"This tension resulting from a syncretic Caribbean culture, which represents
the
possibility of Diversity, and the hegemonic tendencies of European and North
American cultures, which represent the call to Sameness, returns in Poétique
de la relation.  In this text, Glissant sets forth a poetics of identity
that returns to and relies heavily on the rhizomatic theory of identity
developed by Deleuze and Guattari.  After having attempted to define a
Caribbean poetics in Le Discours antillais, Glissant undertakes the
description of a rhizomatic poetics of identity that conceives of all
cultures as creolized. Thus, the poetics of relating is a rhizomatic
poetics, to the extent that it emphasizes connectivity and decentered
identity, but it undergoes a modification in Glissant's conception.  For in
a rhizome, all connections are asignifying and equally valued. Glissant
recognizes that Sameness is always a threat in such instances, as the
peoples of the francophone Caribbean know all too well.  The universalizing
tendencies
of Sameness can only be combatted from a position of security, wherein lies
the risk of turning to an arborescent model of identity.  Sameness can be
resisted, as Glissant claims, through the insistence on difference.  In
Martinique, for example, "three rallying points have taken shape: a
relationship with the environment, the Caribbean; the defense of the popular
language, Creole; the protection of the very territory, through a
mobilization of all. Three contestatory modes of existence, three cultural
reflexes" (Glissant [1990], 160).  However, as we have already seen, these
rallying points, especially the Creole language, have not been successful in
fending off the influences of French culture. As Glissant himself admits,
French is "my language of creation," an expression which contains both the
sense that it is the language in which he creates, but also that it is the
language that created him (Glissant [1990], 126).  And Glissant's conception
of the ways in which Caribbean cultural difference is expressed remains
equally ambivalent, thus weakening his poetics of relating by not theorizing
the difference that will allow for relations of difference and Diversity, as
opposed to the imperialist relations of Sameness.

I'd be interested in hearing what the rest think of Glissant. In spite of
the reservations I sometimes have about his work, I still think it is among
the most though-provoking and relevant writing in the Caribbean today.

Keith
____________________________________________________

Keith Alan Sprouse		e-mail:  kas3f-AT-virginia.edu
New World Studies		office: 804.924.4626
Department of French	fax:  804.924.7157
University of Virginia		home:  804.243.4306
Charlottesville, VA 22903	http://www.people.virginia.edu/~kas3f



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