Édouard Glissant’s Relational Humanism

Chapter Two focuses on Édouard Glissant’s Treatise of the Whole-world . While the two philosophers Glissant is continually in dialogue with, Aimé Césaire and Frantz Fanon, are frequently read for offering new humanisms, Glissant is not necessarily read as a humanist in the same way, in part because he does not call for a new humanism in as explicit of terms as his Martinican forerunners. Consequently, readings of Glissant’s humanism vary greatly. This chapter suggests that, against his own claim that he offers a ‘poetics’ but not a ‘humanism’, Glissant’s work maintains a profound sense of humanity such that we could call it a humanism.