Relation :: transmodernity :: contact « Between Europe and the Americas

Glissant’s transmodern moment, which is something just different than the transmodern in Dussel’s sense, lies in his conception of relation identity. Relation identity uproots subjectivity – and so also collectivity – with a nomadic, rhizomatic conception of connection. Glissant takes the difficult path, here, opting for the affirmation (with all danger, detour in place) of both the pain and pleasure of separation from coloniality. In Poetics of Relation, he writes:

Relation identity

- is linked not to a creation of the world but to the conscious and contradictory experience of contacts among cultures;

- is produced in the chaotic network of Relation and not in the hidden violence of filiation;

- does not devise any legitimacy as its guarantee of entitlement, but circulates, newly extended;

- does not think of a land as a territory from which to project toward other territories but as a place where one gives-on-and-with rather than grasps.

Relation identity exults the thought of errantry and of totality.

The transmodern is invoked here in the (r)ejection of land as foundation or root of projection. As well, the transmodern is present in the (r)ejection of the noble lie of modernity (we are all the same) and the murderous lie of the same (Eurocentrism as inseparable from exploitation and domination).

But Glissant takes on the strangely post-transmodern, even quasi-postmodern, posture of a creolization affirming cultures as such. Not this culture. Not those cultures compatible with a postcolonial project. Rather, cultures as such, even as much in moments of contradictory contact.

The truth that Dussel identifies with the periphery is thereby placed in inseparable contact with what contradicts it. Even the center. This is on the one hand just what Mignolo calls interculturalidad, no? At the same time, it is such a complicated relation to the colonizer, a relation at once (r)ejecting and affirming the colonizer. Affirming the sense of contact – likely the contact of contradiction – but mostly (r)ejecting that colonizer. For Glissant, this is not (r)ejecting the content of modernity or Eurocentric thinking. It is instead (r)ejecting the idea that one would read such a thinking in any way other than Relation, interculturalidad, errantry. In other words, it says yes to the archipelago and no to the continent.

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February 26, 2008 at 4:52 pm

drew wilson

it’s probably too late to get into this discussion but … don’t you think “letter to jane” is profoundly misogynistic? it begins with a lie that its perpetrators do not address: jane fonda is not the “author” of the photograph, not the metteur en scene. the photographer is. godard and gorin’s examination of the photograph’s political/intellectual content is, from the beginning, false because the film makers are themselves more interested in the “star”, fonda, than in the truth: what is the name of the photographer? what is his ideology? since when does the subject of a work of art merit the criticism for the content of that work? can you seriously criticize (or praise) jean paul belmondo because you approve of godard’s politics?

the misogyny, here, is in the assumption that gorin/godard have the right to attack jane fonda not for what she believes (they never asked her and her voice is not part of their harangue) but for what the man who photographs her “believed”, for the artist’s ideology. (nor will it do to say “fonda approved of the photo. so, she is a participant in its ideology.” uhm, no she’s not. she is the subject of a photograph. we don’t even know to what extent she agreed to the photo. and godard and gorin, horrid would-be fascist propagandists, are not interested in the question.) that is, they silence her, then attack her silence. it seems profoundly misogynistic, really despicable. and the lesson of this film is not in its investigation of “the media”, but in its demonstration of an abuse of power that, because gorin/godard were flying the flag of “revolution”, is itself unexamined. (laura mulvey called godard’s misogyny “always interesting” … interesting, no?)

March 17, 2008 at 11:45 am

John

Not sure that you meant to leave this comment for this post, but I have a lot of thoughts.

I don’t find the polemic especially misogynistic. Actually, it seems the inversion of misogyny, in the sense that they take her seriously as a political actor. Fonda of course was an established political actor at this moment, so it is not as though the critique is dependent upon the photographer. She was a bourgeois radical and it shows in the photograph, especially the presence of the camera in the shot. History hasn’t done much to disconfirm the polemic.

In that sense, I think, the photograph captures the essence of Fonda as an activist and “radical.” Aesthetically, that makes sense to me: take the work of art as such seriously, rather than seeking authorial intention behind it all. Given Godard’s obsession with authorial erasure in the late-60s and seventies, it is consistent with his ethical aesthetic to withdraw from concern with intention.

However, that also speaks against the polemic. The photograph needs to speak for itself. It doesn’t. They do too much talking. Therein lies the ethical transgression that, in my opinion, Godard revisits (and overturns, aesthetically) in Comment ca va?, a handful of years later.

At the risk of self-promotion, this is actually the lead-in issue of the 3rd chapter of my forthcoming book on Godard. In erasing authorial intention, Godard first flirts with polemic, then turns to letting the image speak for itself (or at least interrogating the conditions under which such speaking is possible/impossible). So, I do think this is incredibly complex and interesting stuff! But I don’t think it is misogyny. Godard has plenty of sexism (not sure I’d say misogyny, but that might be nitpicky), but I don’t think this is one of those cases.

April 28, 2008 at 2:20 am

maneatingseas