Translation of Alexandre Leupin’s award-winning study of Édouard Glissant’s entire work in relation to philosophy.
One of the greatest writers of the late twentieth century, Édouard Glissant’s body of work covers multiple genres and addresses many cogent contemporary problems, such as borders, multiculturalism, postcolonial and decolonial studies, and global humanities. Édouard Glissant, Philosopher is the first study that maps out this writer’s entire work in relation to philosophy. Glissant is reputed to be a “difficult writer;” however, Alexandre Leupin demonstrates the clarity and coherence of his thinking. Glissant’s rereading of Western philosophy entirely remaps its age-old questions and offers answers that have never been proposed. In doing so, Glissant offers a new way to think about questions that are at the forefront of Global Humanities today: identity, race, communities, diasporas, slavery, nation-states and nationalism, aesthetics, ethics, and the place and function of poetry and art in a globalized world. This book will elucidate Glissant’s theoretical writings, not only in England and in America but also in the anglophone Caribbean, Africa, and India.
Alexandre Leupin is Professor Emeritus in French Studies at Louisiana State University. He is the Founder and Codirector (with Charles Forsdick) of the Glissant Translation Project, which has already published three translations, among them The Baton Rouge Interviews, coauthored by Glissant and Leupin. Andrew Brown previously taught French at the University of Cambridge and is currently a freelance translator of French philosophy and social thought, including works on or by Sartre, Barthes, and Derrida. His books include A Brief History of Biographies: From Plutarch to Celebs.