Poétiques de l’utopie chez Édouard Glissant

Glissant's late work is imbued with references to utopia, which have led some critics to criticize the Martinican poet and philosopher for recanting the radical militancy of his early life, in the name of an aestheticism and idealism that are complicit in forms of domination. However, this utopian turn in his work contrasts with the fixities of classical utopias (Plato, More), which Glissant rejects because of their totalitarian desire to impose norms. Glissant prefers to speak of ‘poétiques de l’utopie', stating: 'Nous ne craignons pas l’Utopie, elle est notre seul Acte: notre seul Art’. This article traces the notion of utopia in Glissant’s late works (in particular La Cohée du Lamentin), aligning it with the 'new utopian spirit' recently analysed by Miguel Abensour. Abensour highlights the ambiguity inherent in this utopian vein, which acts on reality under the garb of a rhetoric of cunning and what Léo Strauss called the 'oblique touch’. Shedding light on this oblique mode of reading in Glissant, I will argue that his utopianism is a continuation of his engagement, which has always connected poetics and politics: ‘l’action de la pensée poétique sur le monde’.non