Four Conversations with Édouard Glissant, whose path-breaking work, according to Gilles Deleuze, "Ties the knot between philosophy and poetry at their deepest and purest level."

In 2009, Malian filmmaker Manthia Diawara followed poet and literary critic Edouard Glissant on the Queen Mary II in a cross Atlantic journey from South Hampton, UK, to Brooklyn, New York. This extraordinary voyage resulted in the production of 50 short clips (2-5 minutes each), in which Glissant elaborates on his theory of Relation. Diawara divided the breathtaking video clips into four general applications of the theory of Relation that shed new light on Glissant's work:
1. Opacity and the History of Unintelligibility
2. Diversity in the Black Night: Chaos, Creolization, Metissage and Post-Race
3. Roots & Imaginary Offshoots: Ecstatic Difference
4. De-capitalization and the Way of the World
Edouard Glissant is one of the most important contemporary thinkers. In the 1980s, his theories of creolization, diversity and otherness, as elaborated in the book Le Discours Antillais (1981), were considered as seminal texts for the emerging studies of multiculturalism, identity politics, minority literature and Black Atlanticsim. In the 1990s and 2000, Glissant's work moved beyond the mere consideration of meanings as posited by relating the signifier to the signified and the recognition of otherness. He developed a theory he calls "Poetique de la relation," and "Tout-Monde," where the concept of "Relation" is perceived as an autonomous entity, moving between objects and providing them with energy, poesis and difference. Recently Glissant published a book, Philosophie de la relation, where the concept is used to meditate on the new meanings of globalization, chaos, violence, equality and justice.

Director: Manthia Diawara
USA/Mali 2010, 52 min, French with English subtitles

Editor: Laurence Attali
Producer: Lydie Diakhaté (K'a Yéléma Productions)


Manthia Diawara is a documentary filmmaker and Distinguised Professor of Comparative Literature and Film at New York University and Director of the Institute for African American Affairs at NYU.



FESTIVALS / SCREENINGS

2010 | FESTIVAL D'AVIGNON - OFF - PREMIERE | Théâtre du Verbe Incarné
* Première internationale

2010 | Late Spring 2010 Screenings at Cornell Cinema | http://cinema.cornell.edu/LateSpring10/one_world_in_relation_fo.html
Thursday, April 8, 7:15, WSH, Free,
* with filmmaker Manthia Diawara & Prof Salah Hassan (Africana Studies)
* Earlier in the day at 4:30pm, both Glissant and Diawara will participate in a panel discussion in the Multipurpose Room of the Africana Studies and Research Center at 310 Triphammer Road.