Culture in Relation divides and specifies without claiming primordial status

Evidence

Prime elements do not enter into Relation. Any prime element would call up the shadow of Being. Lacking any reductive criteria, the undefinable realities of human cultures are here looked upon as constituents, ingredients, with no possibility of our clairning them as primordial. … This way of considering cultures has become widespread through Relation’s very involvement. It is through this window that we watch one another reacting together. Before being perceived as the thing urging us into community, culture calls to mind what it is that divides us from aIl otherness. It is a discriminating factor, with no ostensible discrimination. It specifies without putting aside. — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 814

Categorization

• XREF: Culture-as-discriminating-factor-without-putting-aside is a loosened, non-residential identity — exactly the empirical mechanism the reader seeks for holding difference without collapsing into fixed essentialism. — connects to: Culture does not divide into one coherent culture per community — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2: Identity…, 369; Cultural harmony does not require uniformity among civilizations — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism: A Critique of…, 327; Culture need not align with language and state boundaries — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 1089 (+7 more)
• QUESTION: Does ‘specifies without putting aside’ actually describe a livable collective practice, or only a theorist’s posture? Worth testing against Glissant’s later examples of detour and ruse.

Broader Connections

• Paradigmatic systems define cultures through central domains without essentializing them. #corroborates (0.80) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 145
• Abyss-tested peoples live Relation without claiming chosenness #exemplifies (0.80) — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 106
• Culture does not divide into one coherent culture per community #expands (0.75) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 369
• Culture need not align with language and state boundaries #expands (0.75) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 1089
• Cultural harmony does not require uniformity among civilizations #expands (0.72) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 327
• No generalizable strategy of action in Relation can be developed #complicates (0.72) — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 898