The Writer and the Breath of Place

This interview concerns Glissant’s Tout-monde, which he describes as ‘a novel that has burst apart’, characterized by ‘wandering’ and ‘drift’, in which there is no defined narrator but multiple voices. The ‘Whole-World’ is defined as the totality of the world as it exists in its reality and in our desire. It does not abolish identities, but single root identities are giving way to rhizome-identities. The nation becomes a cultural rather than a political entity. The role of the writer is to express the imagination of the world, starting from one’s own place. We must all try to track down the invariants of chaos. It is the function of poetics, which is a way of conceiving and expressing one’s relation to oneself and the other. The breath of the place meets other breaths and is transformed by that meeting. The Writers’ Parliament held in Strasbourg is a manifestation of solidarity between writers.