The Plantation system’s margins prefigure present-day modes of Relation

Evidence

Let us, nonetheless, consult these ruins with their uncertain evidence, their extremely fragile monuments, their frequently incomplete, obliterated, or ambiguous archives. You can guess already what we are to discover: that the Plantation is one of the focal points for the development of present-day modes of Relation. Within this universe of domination and oppression, of silent or professed dehumanization, fonns of humanity stubbornly persisted. In this outrnoded spot, on the margins of every dynamic, the tendencies of our modernity begin to be detectable. — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 378

Categorization

• XREF: Directly relevant to the reader’s strategic-essentialism project: Glissant locates emergent forms of Relation inside this ‘outmoded spot,’ which parallels finding loosening mechanisms within rather than against fixed structures. — connects to: Africa and colonial plantations shaped European modernity and governmentality — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism: A Critique of…, 41; The Plantation system offers the clearest natural site for observing cultural creolization.
• QUESTION: Worth tracing whether this ‘margins of every dynamic’ claim is where Glissant’s detour/opacity practices concretely originate.

Broader Connections

• The Plantation system offers the clearest natural site for observing cultural creolization. #expands (0.75)
• Africa and colonial plantations shaped European modernity and governmentality #expands (0.72) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 41