Imagination through poetics replaces the impossible total knowledge of cultural confluence.

Evidence

No matter how many studies and references we accumulate (though it is our profession to carry out such things), we will never reach the end of such a volume; knowing this in advance makes it possible fùr us to dwell there. Not knowing this totality is not a weakness. Not wanting to know it certainly is. Consequently, we imagine it through a poetics: this imaginary l’ealm provides the full-sense of aIl these always decisive differentiations. A lack of this poe tics, its absence or its negation, would constitute a failing.* Similarly, thought of the Other is sterile without the other ofThought. — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 783

Categorization

• DEFINE: Glissant defines poetics of relation negatively as the imaginary domain that substitutes for unattainable total knowledge of cultural confluence - useful for pinning down what ‘relation’ means as distinct from mere acknowledgment.
• QUESTION: Glissant distinguishes not-knowing (weakness? no - acceptable) from not-wanting-to-know (a failing). Does this parallel the strategic essentialist’s knowing irony as opposed to the literal essentialist’s willful ignorance?
• XREF: connects to: A hegemonic realism retroactively erases cultural possibilities it cannot absorb — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1009; Alternating focalization lets fiction render cultural borders as mental and permeable rather than fixed.; Cultural definitions remain incomplete working models that enable imagining — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 849 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Literature formally resolves, in the imaginary, social contradictions that cannot be resolved in reality #corroborates (0.80) — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 740
• Alternating focalization lets fiction render cultural borders as mental and permeable rather than fixed. #qualifies (0.78)
• A hegemonic realism retroactively erases cultural possibilities it cannot absorb #qualifies (0.72) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1009
• Cultural definitions remain incomplete working models that enable imagining #corroborates (0.72) — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 849