***SPAM*** NP: on a thinker named Glissant...'to traverse the unknown'

[Mark Kohut]

He criticized classical utopias such as Plato’s *Republic* or Thomas More’s
*Utopia *for being conceived as static systems, rather than something more
radical such as a utopia built upon continuous dialogue. We also drew a
good deal of inspiration from the German philosopher Ernst Bloch who
defined utopia as something that’s missing.

So it’s interesting that Glissant describes utopia in his novel
*Sartorious* through
the story of the Batoutos people. They get their identity not through their
own genealogy but from being in constant exchange with others. I think
that’s a very interesting definition of utopia, as one of exchange, and he
also likens it to a state of ‘trembling’ because it transcends established
systems of thought to traverse the unknown. To quote Glissant, “trembling
is not uncertainty, and it is not fear…. ‘Trembling’ thought […] - every
utopia passes through this kind of thought - is first of all the
instinctive feeling that we must reject all categories of fixed thought and
all categories of imperial thought.”

It’s that notion of resistance and antipathy towards static, fixed thought
and imperial ways of thinking that I think makes him so relevant for the 21
st century.
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