Michael Dash’s translation and abridgment of Le discours antillais into Caribbean Discourse raises the question of how we situate Glissant within Caribbean Studies. Fields ranging from postcolonial studies to critical geography and beyond consistently look to Glissant for answers to burning disciplinary questions. An indelible cause of Glissant's critical mobility today is the effort to translate his work from French into English. This began with Dash's aforementioned translation of Le discours antillais, and has continued through the years to include translations of Glissant's most well-known works (i.e. Poetics of Relation, translated by Betsy Wing) as well as his lesser known works (i.e. The Sun of Consciousness, translated by Nathanaël). Recently, Liverpool University Press launched "The Glissant Translation Project," an entire book series dedicated to the translation of the remaining untranslated works of the late Martinican theorist.

Taken together, these critical and translational engagements mean that Glissant's work and ideas will travel well beyond Francophone, or even Caribbean studies, into new territories and critical grounds. As such, this panel will consider how we deploy Glissant’s literary-creative-artistic thought today in relation to the Caribbean as well as in relation to broader, world literary movements and poetics.

Our panel will feature four 12–15-minute presentations, leaving 15 minutes at the close for free-flowing discussion of the papers presented. We believe that four presenters are necessary to provide a full consideration of the scope and breadth of Glissant's literary and critical œuvre.

Crystal Payne discusses the longevity of Glissant’s “discours” on these issues in current Caribbean scholarship. Missing from Glissant’s discussion, she argues, is the way Caribbean repatriation disrupts the construction of the folk and how returnee identities reflect both home and abroad, adding a new dimension to his poetics of relation and errantry. Ultimately, like Kamau Brathwaite does, Payne aims to return to the ambiguous concept of roots by interrogating the role of return migration in Caribbean literature and society.

Erika Serrato’s reading of La terre magnétique will bring into relief the way the landscape of Rapa Nui (Easter Island) is conceptualized by Glissant as a body. Her analysis considers Glissant’s “pensée archipélique,” but goes beyond it by framing terrestrial and textual engagements as both place markers and scripts to bring out the ways in which concepts rooted in Caribbean epistemologies foreground Glissant’s conceptualization of the world.

Matthew Reeck’s presentation explores his translation and annotation of Glissant’s novel Tout-monde, One-World. He will examine some of the translation’s most difficult lexical conundrums, detailing the interactions he had with others while trying to uncover the meaning of these words and phrases. He aims to show how Glissant’s lexical ground always first includes a Martinican grounding that marks him eternally as a Caribbean writer-historian.

Jeannine Murray-Román will analyze Glissant's anthologizing practices in the 2010 poetry anthology, La terre le feu l'eau et les vents: une anthologie de la poésie du tout-monde. In doing so, she looks to determine how Glissant's concepts such as “les roches” circulate in world literature while carrying with them the specificity of Caribbean grounds.

Our panel incorporates a diversity of voices and perspectives. Our panelists are graduate students, non-tenure-track, tenure-track, and tenured scholars of a range of home disciplines (English, French, Romance Languages) representing various cultural backgrounds and gender identities.