Édouard Glissant & Cybernetics. Histories, Technologies, Practices of Being

Dissertation project by Nelly Y. Pinkrah

© Communications, March 1983, No. 3

In the span of his lifetime – 1928 to 2011 –, the Martinican writer, poet, philosopher and political figure Édouard Glissant, has produced a compelling and thick record that is nothing short of a visioning and building of how to be and relate in today’s world. Glissant thought being in Relation. I think ways of relating in media technological terms. In this project I explore his theoretical, poetic and political work through a lens of Black Studies and Media Theory at the same time to engage in questions of media and constructions of technology, histories and epistemologies. While connecting distinct historical scenes and experiences through and to Glissant’s tools, a Glissantian glossary, a »vision(ing) of the past«, a poetics etc., I strive to examine and possibly re-articulate some conceptual constants of an engagement in cybernetics that has aligned with a specific tradition in scientific debates; cybernetics also has come to determine our concrete experiences of technical life. Why are so many of Glissants concepts increasingly taken up in media studies and closely related fields? Why or for what do they become functional? What was the (work’s) relation to Glissant’s cybernetic contemporaries? Why and how does Glissant’s theory and practice defer – histories, knowledges and disciplines?