Opacity for the other triggers assimilation or annihilation, never coexistence

Evidence

These myths express communities, each one innocently transparent for self and threateningly opaque for the other. They are functional, even if they take obscure or devious means. They suggest that the selfs opacity for the other is insurmountable, and, consequently, no rnatter how opaque the other is for oneself (no myth ever provides for the legitimacy of the other), it will always be a question of reducing this other to the transparency experienced by oneself. Either the other is assimilated, or else it is annihilated. That is the whole principle of generalization and its entire process. — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 296

Categorization

• XREF: Directly feeds the reader’s question on strategic essentialism: this is Glissant establishing why opacity — not transparency — is the escape from the assimilate-or-annihilate bind. Pairs with Spivak’s later reflections on essentialism. — connects to: Hegelian appearance is always being-for-another in dual temporal and supersensible senses — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 878; Assimilationism operates as solipsistic narcissism that cannot recognize otherness; Homogeneity is never natural but requires constant repressive maintenance (+2 more)
• SEED: The ‘assimilate or annihilate’ dyad is Glissant stating his master problem; an essay could use it to frame why strategic identity performance fails when it must court transparency.

Broader Connections

• Assimilationism operates as solipsistic narcissism that cannot recognize otherness #expands (0.85)
• Climate-based monogenesis remained an assimilationist rebuttal to polygenesis #exemplifies (0.80) — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 353
• Homogeneity is never natural but requires constant repressive maintenance #corroborates (0.75)
• The Other’s existence is certain while the Other’s identity as this object never is. #complicates (0.75)
• Hegelian appearance is always being-for-another in dual temporal and supersensible senses #complicates (0.70) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 878