Totality thought as finality blocks the relational whole it purports to achieve.

Evidence

We have suggested that Relation is an open totality evolving upon itself. That means that, thought of in this manner, it is the principle of unity that we subtract from this idea. In Relation the whole is not the finality of its parts: for multiplicity in totality is totally diversity. Let us say this again, opaquely: the idea of totality alone is an obstacle to totality. — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 961

Categorization

• QUESTION: For the strategic essentialism project: does this suggest that any fixed/unified identity claim, even strategic, reintroduces the totalizing obstacle Glissant names?
• XREF: connects to: Philosophy’s highest concepts fail precisely through their claim to totality — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2540; Human reality arises as a lack of an impossible self-totality — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 362; Creolized totality is ordered yet free of hierarchy and essence — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 487 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Philosophy’s highest concepts fail precisely through their claim to totality #expands (0.92) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2540
• Totalizing approaches a boundary it can never actually cross #corroborates (0.90) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 775
• Creolized totality is ordered yet free of hierarchy and essence #qualifies (0.80) — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 487
• Totality of being arises only through the detotalized for-itself #qualifies (0.80) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 585
• Identity is a contradictory, multi-discursive, non-closed totality #qualifies (0.78)
• Human reality arises as a lack of an impossible self-totality #expands (0.75) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 362
• Poetic and mathematical axioms both proceed toward unrealizable totality #exemplifies (0.75) — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 462