Rambling defies narrative by building a self-sufficient linguistic totality instead of telling the world
Evidence
A poetics of language-in-itself. It sanctions the moment when language, as if satisfied with its perfection, ceases to take for its object the recounting of its connection with particular surroundings, to concentrate solely upon its fervor to exceed its limits and reveal thoroughly the elements composing itsolely upon its engineering skill with these. This practice does not proceed without rambling, because rambling-as Mallarmé weIl knew-is an absolute challenge to narrative. Rather than discovering or telling about the world, it is a matter of producing an equivalent, which would be the Book, in which everything would be said, without anything’s being reported. — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 181
Categorization
Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims
- XREF: This Mallarmé book-totality idea connects to Glissant’s larger contrast between Western ‘totality’ poetics and creolized relation — relevant to how the reader weighs fixed-identity totality against rhizomatic openness.