A fertile but unexamined opacity now blocks Western self-projection

Evidence

Transparency no longer seems like the bottom of the mirror in which Western humanity reflected the world in its own image. There is opacity now at the bottom of the mirror, a whole alluvium deposited by populations, silt that is fertile but, in actual fact, indistinct and unexplored even today, denied or insulted more often than no t, and with an insistent presence that we are incapable of not experiencing. — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 574

Categorization

• XREF: This directly connects to the reader’s core line of research on Glissant’s opacity as a practiced identity mechanism versus Spivak’s strategic essentialism. — connects to: The West’s self-conception formed only in relation to the Rest; False projection makes the world appear as destructive allegories — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 151; The West’s self-image as civilized required the constructed Other to define against — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2: Identity…, 670

Broader Connections

• The West’s self-image as civilized required the constructed Other to define against #expands (0.80) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 670
• The West’s self-conception formed only in relation to the Rest #expands (0.78)
• False projection makes the world appear as destructive allegories #expands (0.72) — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 151