Chaos in Glissant’s sense is Relation, a totality whose order is perpetually in flux

Evidence

We were circling around the thought of Chaos, sensing that the way Chaos itself goes around is the opposite of what is ordinarily understood by “chaotic” and that it opens onto a new phenomenon: Relation, or totality in evolution, whose order is continually in flux and whose disorder one can imagine forever. — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 660

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines Glissant’s non-pejorative sense of Chaos as ordered flux, the seed of creolization-as-Relation.
• XREF: Connects to rhizome identity and to Glissant’s relation to Deleuze/Guattari; relevant to the reader’s creolization-as-mechanism thread. — connects to: Archipelagos naturally illustrate the thought of Relation. — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 238; In Relation-ship legitimacy is wholly supplanted by contingency — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 350; Chaos-monde for Glissant means ordered without hierarchy, an open non-mechanistic totality — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 485 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Relation differs from totality by being self-active movement rather than static closure #expands (0.90) — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 863
• Order emerges from relations between things, not from an external observer’s frame #corroborates (0.85) — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 538
• Relation forms a self-sustaining generative system rather than a static being #expands (0.80)
• Creolized totality is ordered yet free of hierarchy and essence #expands (0.75) — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 487