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Celia Britton. Edouard Glissant and Postcolonial Theory. Charlottesville: U Virginia P, 1999.224 pp.
The title of Celia Britton's study of the Martiniquan theorist and writer Edouard Glissant signals this book's important contribution to the growing body of writing on Glissant. Hers is the first book-length work to situate Glissant in the context of contemporary postcolonial theory, noting how his writings can be read alongside those of more widely known theorists such as Frantz Fanon, Homi Bhabha, and Gayatri Spivak. Britton complements her comprehensive study of Glissant's theoretical writings with a detailed examination of how his theory is realized in the practice of his fiction. While not superseding the pioneering work of J. Michael Dash on Glissant, Britton's elucidation of Glissant's theories in particular will significantly broaden the scope of current critical understanding of his oeuvre.
Britton's study is organized thematicalry, beginning with an introductory chapter that "outlines those aspects of [Glissant's] theoretical writing that relate to the question of language and cultural resistance" and juxtaposes them with other postcolonialist theory. This problematic becomes the organizing principle for the remaining chapters, which explore the strategies of resistance that emerge in Glissant's critical and creative writing. The introduction elucidates four main concepts that emerge from his "complex, ramified, proliferating, and constantly evolving body of ideas": relation, opacity, detour, and counterpoetics. Those acquainted with Glissant's writings will have some familiarity with these terms (although translators are not consistent in their English renderings of his French), but Britton's definitions serve both as...