Paper short abstract:

This paper considers the liberatory promise and totalizing pitfalls of “diversality” as articulated in the manifesto Eloge de la créolité(,1989) as an Afrodiasporic planetary imaginary and relational identitarian schema produced by the Glissantian geographic contaminations and collusions of place.

Paper long abstract:

TThis paper revisits the notion of “diversality” or “ the conscious harmonisation of preserved diversities” proposed by the authors of the the manifesto Eloge de la créolité [In Praise of Creoleness] (1989 as the liberatory promise of creolised identities. It firstly considers French/ francophone linguistic context and slave histories from which this manifesto emerges, through Emily Apter’s (2005) rich conception of francophonie as “a planetary cartography, a postcolonial ontology […] a poetics of the Idea (Dependency, Empire, Racism, Love, Kinship, Groups, Universals, the Relation, Singularity, the Event, Extension, Transit, Capitalism, Citizenship, Logics of the World)”. Secondly, it considers Maryse Condé’s novella Pays Melé [Land of Many Colors] (1997) as literary representation of “diversality”, through the Glissantian notion of the totalité-terre, [whole world] (1997). Engaging the literary representation of the “contaminations de l’ordre géographique: les collusions de lieu” [geographic contaminations or collusions of place] (1997) that create, what the authors of the manifesto consider to be constitutive of the “mosaic” and “braid of histories” of creole identities and their liberatory promise of “diversality” in opposition to Western (French) universality. This enables a critical reading of both the liberatory promise and totalizing pitfalls of “diversality” as an Afrodiasporic planetary imaginary and relational identitarian schema produced by the Glissantian geographic contaminations and collusions of place associated with creolisation.