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Caribbean Discourse: Selected Essays
Selected essays from the rich and complex collection of Edouard Glissant, one of the most prominent writers and intellectuals of the Caribbean, examine the psychological, sociological, and philosophical implications of cultural dependency.
272 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1989
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About the author
Édouard Glissant
99 books180 followersÉdouard Glissant was a French writer, poet, philosopher, and literary critic from Martinique. He is widely recognised as one of the most influential figures in Caribbean thought and cultural commentary.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
June 2, 2024
Extremely wide-ranging—national language; literary criticism; Western linear and canonical History vis-à-vis the diverse multiple histories (“History is a highly functional fantasy of the West”) and fragmented chronologies of the Caribbean.
September 5, 2012
Unless you've lived on Martinique in the French West Indies, I'm not sure you can completely appreciate or understand what Glissant is trying to convey. I've only scratched the surface but then I only lived there a little over 2 years. This book is to be experienced on several levels and I admit that I am limited because of the relatively little time spent on the island. The parts that did speak to me were invaluable, but I would suggest that this book isn't for everyone; only the few that want to understand the French colonial mindset and the effect of that colonialism on the culture of the Béké.
September 9, 2019
Reading this book reminded me that some essayists really stand above the crowd. Imagine reading this stuff in local magazines. A truly gifted writer.
May 17, 2025
“It is said that in certain points of Northern Québec, as no doubt in the steppes of Russia, you lose a sense of direction and have no sense of moving forward. I am curious about how the imagination functions there. Just like the child who would wish: ‘I would like to boil like water just to see how it feels’; I say to myself: ‘I would like just once to feel myself part of such an unrelieved vastness, to experience what rhythm of life it imposes.’” (pg 173)
While this book might seem more daunting than Glissant’s more famous works like Poetics of Relation and Poetic Intention, I think it could actually be a really fine introduction into his opus, as it discusses at length, that which we all share: language. Coming at this as an inheritor of an English-based Creole tradition, I don’t know if I’ve read any other works, including others by Glissant, that have made me feel more comfortable in my skin (or should I say mouth). I feel very grateful to have found this book.
While this book might seem more daunting than Glissant’s more famous works like Poetics of Relation and Poetic Intention, I think it could actually be a really fine introduction into his opus, as it discusses at length, that which we all share: language. Coming at this as an inheritor of an English-based Creole tradition, I don’t know if I’ve read any other works, including others by Glissant, that have made me feel more comfortable in my skin (or should I say mouth). I feel very grateful to have found this book.
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August 29, 2024 My Favorite Short Quotes
As far as I am concerned, that my landscape changes in me, it is probable that it changes with me.
…history and literature first come together in the realm of myth, but the first as a premonition of the past, and the second as memory of the future. Both obscure yet functional.
A self-confident people has the ability to transform into a mythical victory what may have been a real defeat; One can go so far as to argue that the defeats of heroes are necessary to the solidarity of communities.
It is because social and political reality in Martinique is camouflaged in all kinds of ways — by imitation and depersonalization, by imposed ideologies, by creature comforts
As far as I am concerned, that my landscape changes in me, it is probable that it changes with me.
…history and literature first come together in the realm of myth, but the first as a premonition of the past, and the second as memory of the future. Both obscure yet functional.
A self-confident people has the ability to transform into a mythical victory what may have been a real defeat; One can go so far as to argue that the defeats of heroes are necessary to the solidarity of communities.
It is because social and political reality in Martinique is camouflaged in all kinds of ways — by imitation and depersonalization, by imposed ideologies, by creature comforts
June 12, 2025
J'ai enfin terminé ce livre — quelle misère ! La prose, avec son ton familier et franc, de Glissant m'a captivée ; j'ai hâte de lire encore plus de ses écrits (mais, malheuresement, je dois me limiter à ceux qui concerne Faulkner pour le moment).
April 1, 2023
This is easily, by far, the most accessible and fascinating piece of academic writing I've engaged with. I'm thankful I read this for my thesis and it will definitely impact my personal writing.
November 7, 2023
As someone who's visited several countries in the Caribbean, but for whom its complicated history, diverse culture (beyond the consumerist and folkloric stereotypes of Caribbean culture that are neatly packaged and offered to tourists) has always been a mystery, this book was not only educational, but also revelatory.
Glissant writes of the formation of the Caribbean and how its twisted, and frankly, tortured genesis affects Caribbean peoples today - from the complete and devastating extermination of the native Caribs, to the repopulation of the islands based exclusively on the transplantation of African - and then later Indian - slaves who found (and still find) themselves dispossessed in both time and space from ancestral ties to their cultural hinterland, to the slaves' subsequent lack of recorded history (what Glissant calls "nonhistory") due to the absence of a collective memory of their own (i.e. the lack of documentation of the struggle of slavery that colonization ensured bore no witnesses), to a state of restlessness and ineffectuality as a result of the absence of productivity post-slavery or any productive industry to replace the Caribbean plantation system... Interestingly, Glissant discusses the fascinating consequences of liberation and the abolition of slavery in the Caribbean in a way I had never encountered before. Abolition for most countries in the Caribbean, apart (notably) from Haiti, was not something that was fought for, but rather was granted by the colonizers as a result of pressure in the home countries. As such, rather than abolition being a product of community effort and collective activism, which would offer a deeper and more unifying sense of identity, independence, and freedom, abolition paradoxically reinforced the disillusionment of African Caribbeans as it contributed to a pervasive and general sense of helplessness and passiveness among the majority of former slaves in the Caribbean. This has since seeped into the attitude and culture in the Caribbean.
Glissant breaks down the trap of folklore in Caribbean art, the false prize of 'citizenship,' the pernicious, racist forces of assimilation in French- and Anglo-Caribbean countries (an assimilation made even more ludicrous by the fact that it is pressure to assimilate to an approximation/simulation of English and French culture), the crushing weight of French and English linguistic dominance and the nonfunctional nature of Creole, and finally the current state of cultural self-obscurity, oblivion, isolation, and stagnation that Caribbean peoples find themselves in. Finally, Glissant outlines the importance of transcending the divisiveness of colonization, of the need for art to forge a social and political culture that is true to the reality of the Caribbean, something which has never been done before. He says, "I believe in the future of small countries," and after finishing, I hope the future he envisions for the Caribbean is possible, too.
Glissant's essays were sobering, informative, and though dense at times and somewhat difficultly paced (from an organizational tempo standpoint), beautifully written.
Glissant writes of the formation of the Caribbean and how its twisted, and frankly, tortured genesis affects Caribbean peoples today - from the complete and devastating extermination of the native Caribs, to the repopulation of the islands based exclusively on the transplantation of African - and then later Indian - slaves who found (and still find) themselves dispossessed in both time and space from ancestral ties to their cultural hinterland, to the slaves' subsequent lack of recorded history (what Glissant calls "nonhistory") due to the absence of a collective memory of their own (i.e. the lack of documentation of the struggle of slavery that colonization ensured bore no witnesses), to a state of restlessness and ineffectuality as a result of the absence of productivity post-slavery or any productive industry to replace the Caribbean plantation system... Interestingly, Glissant discusses the fascinating consequences of liberation and the abolition of slavery in the Caribbean in a way I had never encountered before. Abolition for most countries in the Caribbean, apart (notably) from Haiti, was not something that was fought for, but rather was granted by the colonizers as a result of pressure in the home countries. As such, rather than abolition being a product of community effort and collective activism, which would offer a deeper and more unifying sense of identity, independence, and freedom, abolition paradoxically reinforced the disillusionment of African Caribbeans as it contributed to a pervasive and general sense of helplessness and passiveness among the majority of former slaves in the Caribbean. This has since seeped into the attitude and culture in the Caribbean.
Glissant breaks down the trap of folklore in Caribbean art, the false prize of 'citizenship,' the pernicious, racist forces of assimilation in French- and Anglo-Caribbean countries (an assimilation made even more ludicrous by the fact that it is pressure to assimilate to an approximation/simulation of English and French culture), the crushing weight of French and English linguistic dominance and the nonfunctional nature of Creole, and finally the current state of cultural self-obscurity, oblivion, isolation, and stagnation that Caribbean peoples find themselves in. Finally, Glissant outlines the importance of transcending the divisiveness of colonization, of the need for art to forge a social and political culture that is true to the reality of the Caribbean, something which has never been done before. He says, "I believe in the future of small countries," and after finishing, I hope the future he envisions for the Caribbean is possible, too.
Glissant's essays were sobering, informative, and though dense at times and somewhat difficultly paced (from an organizational tempo standpoint), beautifully written.
May 6, 2016
Thinking the Caribbean (as well as other spaces of Francophone diaspora, even including Quebec) just wouldn't be the same without Glissant's powerful, nuanced, immensely thoughtful theory and criticism.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews