Édouard Glissant: one world in relation (2010)

In 2009, Manthia Diawara, with his camera, followed Édouard Glissant on the Queen Mary II in a cross-Atlantic journey from South Hampton (UK) to Brooklyn (New York). This poetic meditation continued in Martinique, the native home of Édouard Glissant. The extraordinary voyages resulted in the production of an intellectual biography in which Glissant elaborates on his theory of Relation and the concept of "Tout-monde." Édouard Glissant was 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, he developed a theory he called "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. In his book "Philosophie de la relation", Glissant used the concept to meditate on the new meanings of globalization, chaos, violence, equality and justice.