Comparing cultural values presumes stability that planetary contact itself undermines.

Evidence

Discussing the comparative values of cultures would arnount to maintaining that cultural values are stable and acknowledged as such. Contact among cultures infers, however, a relation of uncertainty, in the perception one has or the experience one senses of them. The mere fact of reflecting them in common, in a planetary perspective, inflects the nature and the “projection” of every specific culture contemplated. Decisive mutations in the quality of relationships result from this, with spectacular consequences that are often thus “experienced” long before the basis for the change itself has been perceived by the collective consciousness. — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 816

Categorization

• XREF: Glissant’s point that relational contact makes cultural identity unstable connects to the strategic essentialism bind the reader is tracing: essentialist self-definition presupposes a stability that relation itself corrodes. — connects to: Acknowledging cultural difference can compound rather than resolve essentialism by implying boundedness — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 949
• DEFINE: Glissant previews a core principle: relation inflects and unsettles any culture’s stable self-projection, an anti-essentialist groundwork.

Broader Connections

• Acknowledging cultural difference can compound rather than resolve essentialism by implying boundedness #expands (0.78) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 949