Perse grounds identity in a deliberately forged future name rather than fixed birthplace

Evidence

Saint:John Perse renounces any sort of “grasp” of the history of the place he was born and projects, into an eternally given future, the Ail he takes for his grounding. The commonplace ofsuch a future is the name, his name as poet, one deliberately forged: a word. ” shall inhabit ml’ name.” … With these words he announces not the obsolescence of narrative but a new and original aesthetic form: the narration of the universe. This is why his writing takes on added strength from his considerable efforts as an entomologist, cartographer, or lexicographer. The rigors of material and his encyclopedic knowledge weave a controlled proliferation through which the universe overflows and recounts itself for us. — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 254

Categorization

• XREF: ‘I shall inhabit my name’ is a concrete mechanism for holding an identity as project rather than residence — directly relevant to whether strategic/constructed identity can avoid collapse. — connects to: A person’s identity is deeply tied to their birthplace. — Crews, Harry, A childhood the biography of a place, 44; Perse’s colonial-creole tensions resist reduction to biographical drama — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 253; Identity is constituted within representation rather than pre-existing it (+4 more)
• DEFINE: ‘Inhabiting a name’ as erecting the self in a rootless future-ground is the chapter’s core alternative to biographical/historical identity anchoring.

Broader Connections

• A person’s identity is deeply tied to their birthplace. #contradicts (0.90) — Crews, Harry, A childhood the biography of a place, 44
• Being named by others can produce the very identity one then inhabits. #corroborates (0.85)
• The new identification produces a self that did not preexist it. #corroborates (0.85)
• Identity is constituted within representation rather than pre-existing it #corroborates (0.80)
• Perse’s colonial-creole tensions resist reduction to biographical drama #qualifies (0.75) — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 253
• Assimilation reduced Jewish identity to a mere fact of birth #corroborates (0.72)
• Archaeology and renaming manufacture an originary claim to contested land #corroborates (0.70)