Thought vacillates between concrete results and providential heroes in face of limitless cultural mixing.

Evidence

The thing that makes the understanding of every culture limitless is precisely the thing that allows us to imagine, without approaching it, the infinite interaction of cultures. Magma in profusion, tending to empty aIl thought of ideology, which is considered inapplicable to such an amalgam. Collective drives tend more toward the literaI and utilitarian (the reassuring heft of coner’ete results promoted to the dignity of a value) or toward the providential and ideal (the reassuring determination of a cause or hero making choices for you). LiteraI and ideal make good company for each other. — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 869

Categorization

• QUESTION: Is ‘amalgam’ here Glissant’s term for creolization-as-collapse, contrasting with his favored ‘creolization’ as open process? This distinction may matter for the reader’s strategic essentialism tracing.
• XREF: The literal/providential dichotomy echoes the Frankfurt School’s analysis of bourgeois thought retreating to utility or to a guiding hero.