@article{Maerz2019,
  author    = {M{\"a}rz, Moses Alexander},
  title     = {Imagining a politics of relation},
  series = {Tydskrif vir letterkunde},
  volume    = {56},
  journal   = {Tydskrif vir letterkunde},
  number    = {1},
  publisher = {University of Pretoria},
  address   = {Pretoria},
  issn      = {0041-476X},
  doi       = {10.17159/2309-9070/tvl.v.56i1.6271},
  pages     = {49 -- 61},
  year      = {2019},
  abstract  = {This study explores the theoretical and political potentials of {\´E}douard Glissant's philosophy of relation and its approach to the issues of borders, migration, and the setup of political communities as proposed by his pens{\´e}e nouvelle de la fronti{\`e}re (new border thought), against the background of the German migration crisis of 2015. The main argument of this article is that Glissant's work offers an alternative epistemological and normative framework through which the contemporary political issues arising around the phenomenon of repressive border regimes can be studied. To demonstrate this point, this article works with Glissant's border thought as an analytical lens and proposes a pathway for studying the contemporary German border regime. Particular emphasis is placed on the identification of potential areas where a Glissantian politics of relation could intervene with the goal of transforming borders from impermeable walls into points of passage. By exploring the political implications of his border thought, as well as the larger philosophical context from which it emerges, while using a transdisciplinary approach that borrows from literary and political studies, this work contributes to ongoing debates in postcolonial studies on borders and borderlessness, as well as Glissant's political legacy in the twenty-first century.},
  language  = {en}
}
@phdthesis{Maerz2020,
  author    = {M{\"a}rz, Moses},
  title     = {{\´E}douard Glissant's politics of relation},
  doi       = {10.25932/publishup-50948},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-509486},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  pages     = {xv, 530},
  year      = {2020},
  abstract  = {The political legacy of the Martinican poet, novelist and philosopher {\´E}douard Glissant (1928-2011) is the subject of an ongoing debate among postcolonial literary scholars. Responding to an influential view shaping this debate, that Glissant's work can be categorised into an early political and late apolitical phase, this dissertation claims that this division is based on a narrow conception of 'engaged political writing' that prevents a more comprehensive view of the changing political strategies Glissant pursued throughout his life from emerging. Proceeding from this conceptual basis, the dissertation is concerned with re-reading the dimensions of Glissant's work that have hitherto been relegated as apolitical, literary or poetic, with the aim of conceptualising the politics of relation as an integral part of his overall poetic project. In methodological terms, the dissertation therefore proposes a relational reading of Glissant's life-work across literary genres, epochs, as well as the conventional divisions between political thought, writing and activism. This perspective is informed by Glissant's philosophy of relation, and draws on a conception of political practice that includes both explicit engagements with established political systems and institutions, as well as literary and cultural interventions geared towards their transformation and the creation of alternatives to them. Theoretically the work thus combines a poststructuralist lens on the conceptual difference between 'politics' and 'the political' with arguments for an inherent political quality of literature, and perspectives from the Afro-Caribbean radical tradition, in which writers and intellectuals have historically sought to combine discursive interventions with organisational actions. Applying this theoretical angle to the analysis of Glissant's politics of relation results in an interdisciplinary research framework designed to explore the synergies between postcolonial political and literary studies. In order to comprehensively describe Glissant's politics of relation without recourse to evolutionary or digressive models, the concept of an intellectual marronage is proposed as a framework to map the strategies making up Glissant's political archive. Drawing on a variety of historic, political theoretical and literary sources, intellectual marronage is understood as a mode of radical resistance to the neocolonial subjugation for which the plantation system stands historically and metaphorically, as an inherently innovative political practice invested in the creation of communities marked by relational ontologies, and as a commitment to fostering an imagination of the world and the human that differs fundamentally from the Enlightenment paradigm. This specific conception of intellectual marronage forms the basis on which three key strategies that consistently shape Glissant's political practice are identified and mapped. They revolve around Glissant's engagement with history (chapter 2), his commitment to fostering an imagination of the Tout-Monde (whole-world) as a political point of reference (chapter 3), and the continuous exploration of alternative forms of community on the levels of the island, the archipelago and the Tout-Monde (chapter 4). Together these strategies constitute Glissant's personal politics of relation. Its abstract characteristics can be put in a productive conversation with related theoretical traditions invested in exploring the political potentials of fugitivity (chapters 5), as well as with the work of other postcolonial actors whose holistic practice warrants to be described as a politics of relation (chapter 6).},
  language  = {en}
}