“Je te parle dans ta langue, et c’est dans mon langage que je t’entends:” The Stranger’s Linguistic Ingenuity

Abstract

The article examines Glissant’s idea of generosity against Derrida’s non-concept of absolute hospitality through their different approaches to language and translation, further illuminated by recent theoretical contributions by decolonial critics and theorists from the Global South. Generosity as the recognition of the Other’s innate nobility manifests a Relation without ethics since the latter presupposes an exchange subtended by the principles of commensurability and transparency. Underpinning his reflection on the strangers’ co-presence in the world is the “improbable” case of creole languages which, far from being mere by-products of the physical labor forcibly extracted from their speakers, or operating as contingent and disposable tools, became enduring idioms that bear testimony to the material conditions and the historical context of their creation while continuing to bear the traces of their coming-into-being. In the wake of the abyssal experience of the Middle Passage, Glissant’s proposition invites us to consider generosity as the model for an incommensurable and untranslatable Relation epitomized in his poetic creed: “Je te parle dans ta langue, et c’est dans mon langage que je t’entends.”