His Legacy Relates: Édouard Glissant’s Thought in Literature and Culture

While Glissant’s œuvre is closely studied by literary critics, his key theoretical concepts have emerged in unexpected places: in architecture and urban planning, politics, and popular culture. The mosaic canvas of Glissantian philosophy also gains graphic and performative dimensions through painting, drawing, dance, and music. In the contemporary art world, especially, the archipelagic dissemination of his thought is represented in collective exhibitions and solo shows in Atlanta, Brussels, Chicago, Dakar, Marrakesh, Miami, Montreal, New York City, Sao Paolo, and Venice. This extensive network of events demonstrates the power of his ideas to generate new pathways for rethinking questions of identity, the impact of which, according to J. Michael Dash, is the “burgeoning Glissantian century.”