SUN OF CONSCIOUSNESS

Philosophy / Theory. Translated by Nathanaël. Nighboat Books, 2020. Paperback, 112 pages. 7.9" x 5.2" x 0.4"

From the press: Soleil de la Conscience (Sun of Consciousness) was Martinican philosopher Édouard Glissant's first published work, and opened the Poétique (Poetics) strain of his oeuvre.

This book-length essay, which is characterized by its exploratory, intimate character, announces Glissants concerns with créolisation (creolization), mondialité (worldliness, as against globalization), or opacité (opacity) and inscribes in this work a refusal of colonialism and of inverted exoticism. 

The sense of estrangement experienced by the author who arrives as a "foreigner" in a country to which he is bound by "the first page of his passport" is the author's principal preoccupation. By positioning himself as both different and same, Glissant opens a space for the writing of a(nother) history: that of the Caribbean.