A Schizophrenia That Wasn’t One: Édouard Glissant and Poetry, Painting and Politics in 1950s Paris

Yet instead of examining issues that the text's editors, Michel le Bris and lean Rouaud, were eager to highlight, such as the use of the term "francophone" in the French literary system or the purportedly hermetic nature of modern metropolitan writing,1 Glissant spends the majority of his contribution reflecting on the aesthetics of his favorite authors and discussing principles behind his own poetics.2 The title he selects for the interview-"Solitaire et solidaire"-also appears to caution against grouping his views too emphatically with those of the rest of the book's authors. The First and Second Congresses of Black Writers and Artists, which took place in Paris in 1956 and Rome in 1959, witnessed the delivery of multiple speeches that underscored the importance of producing a littérature engagée during this moment of struggle for national independence, civil rights, and racial equality.6 At a time when the description of someone as a writer was frequently met with the question "Oui mais, à part ça?