The Dialectic of the Mediterranean and the Caribbean in the Work of Édouard Glissant Chapitre d’ouvrage - 2021

Version anglaise légèrement différente de l’article en français (2018) à destination de l’édition américaine du livre Édouard Glissant, Radiance and Obscurity, à paraître en 2020. The Mediterranean and the Caribbean are frequently opposed as different geographical zones and distinct insular regions with contrasting cultures. One of the most important writers of the French Caribbean, Édouard Glissant, whose work reflects deeply on colonialism, slavery, and racism, has formulated an influential concept of Antillanité, or Caribbeanness, that has frequent recourse to this opposition. He uses it to emphasize what he conceives as a line of demarcation between a sea of brilliant explosion outward (l’éclat) and a sea of inward oriented concentration (l’obscur). One of the several passages in which he discusses this distinction appears in a conversation collected in the volume, Interviews in Baton Rouge (Entretiens à Baton Rouge ;