Edouard Glissant. Naissance d'une anthropologie antillaise au siècle de l'assimilation

Abstract

Abstract Edouard Glissant: The Birth of Anthropology in the French Antilles during the Century of Assimilation. — The anthropology of the French Antilles is yet to be done, because of the assimilation experienced by these societies. Through essays, poems and novels, Edouard Glissant has undertaken this endeavor. He has discovered: the possibility of philosophical anthropology; the need to construct a vocabulary for a cultural anthropology by epistemologically criticizing several European ethnologists; and the urgency of inventing a social anthropology of the Antilles. His approach is a mixture of concepts and theories often borrowed without any precise references to contradictory disciplines. But its interest lies in the works he has selected to use with the legitimate consciousness of taking a special look at a unique reality. Instead of an affirmed, recognized scientific method, E. Glissant has invented an "ethnopoetics", a literary endeavor with anthropological aims. According to him, this represents the only way to tackle the complexity of Antillean society.