Poetics of World-Making: Creolizing the Sacred, Becoming Archipelago

Chapter 5 deepens the discussions about the problem of secularist methods and disciplinary practices that often segregate religion in decolonial thinking and poetics. The chapter focuses on Édouard Glissant, one of the key thinkers who shaped the Caribbean poeticist tradition. With his constructive philosophical vision, Glissant seeks to rethink being in relation to place(lessness). Decolonizing being and place requires rethinking them completely anew, as creative movements of encounter, exchange, and becoming. While Glissant rarely evokes religion explicitly, the notion of the sacred occupies a significant place in his philosophical vision. The poetics of creolization, central to Glissant’s thoughts, indicates a constant morphing, becoming, and re-creating of the sacred. In conversation with his Caribbean interlocutors, such as Aimé Césaire, Derek Walcott, and Sylvia Wynter, the chapter seeks to identify the central place of the sacred in Glissant’s generative visions.