Poetics + Expanse & Filiation

Édouard Glissant. Poetics of Relation.

"Poetics" was a much more useful chapter than "Expanse & Filiation"-- though only the latter is on my list-- so I'll focus on the former. Glissant is positing that the way poetics work-- in French lit, particularly-- is Relational model, rather than, formerly

1) poetics of depth: think Baudelaire who "quashed romantic lyricism's claim that the poet was the introspective master of his jos or sorrows; and ...it was in his power to draw clear, plain lessons from this that would benefit everyone.

Rather, knowledge in the matter (of inner-depth-delving) is the goal, "first dispossessing it of the sovereign subject (requiring the knowledge-- the gaze, or the hearing-- of another) then surrendering it to this subject (speaking 'in' the structures of any expressed knowledge" (24)

2) poetics of language-in-itself: Mallarmé? "The poetics of language-in-itself strives toward a knowledge that by definition would only be exercised within the limits of a given language. It would renounce... the nostalgia for other languages-- or the infinite possible languages-- now germinating in every literature."

3) poetics of structure: creator of a text effaced to be revealed in the texture of her creation

"The neutral rather than harsh reality of the object; the tightening of the locus; the low regard for any thought claiming falsely to be final; the literal and the flat-- these are a few of the factors linked with the works of numerous contemporary French authors that provide access to them w/in the context of poetics" (26)

a poetics of relation is about influence, but not always neatly, traceably so; and "the consciousness of Relation [is] widespread, including both the collective and the individual. We 'know' that the other is within us and affects how we evolve as well as the bulk of our conceptions and the development of our sensibility... a sort of 'consciousness of consciousness' opens us up and turns each of us into a disconcerted actor in the poetics of Relation." (27)

Relation informs not simply what is relayed but also the relative and the related; movement for France "a culture that projected onto the world (with the aim of dominating it) and a language that was presented as universal (with the aim of providing legitimacy to the attempt at domination)" (28)

central also to this idea is M. Samir Amin's global theory of worldwide economy: Centers produce & control, Peripheries receive

says Glissant: "the poet's world leads from periphery to periphery; ...that is, it makes every periphery into a center; furthermore, it abolishes the very notion of center and periphery." (29)

so the "movements" or described "relation" Glissant is tracking through contemporary lit seem to be more rhizomatic (but I can't help myself, the theory makes so much sense to me that I can't understand how else it could work... but perhaps because [and Glissant mentions this too] it's because our poetics owe so much to accumulation and duration)

side note: Glissant mentions something about the peripheries all forming not an Absolute but a Totality, which I understand as-- not a monolithic ideal (see French colonization) but an inclusion of all components and byproducts of what G calls a métissage-- interbreeding-- but seems to be the same as Deleuze and Guatarri's rhizome idea)

to be completely reductionistic and simplistic, then, the ideas of filiation and expansion fit in thusly: filiation is linear, centered around the mythic idea of a 'root' or 'source' that can be traced to-- heritage, lineage, etc; but the expansion of Relation provides a more accurate model or description of what actually occurs (or presently occurs) in that, see above, not everything is so tidily traceable-- and the quest to trace origins in such a linear fashion often isn't productive