Eduardo Glissant discusses how Positivism and Humanism are alike in that they both hold an “ideal object” as a core value. Through this ideal object culture becomes monolith, a farce that we all presume we are stumbling towards. But since Einstein, the myth of the grand explainer scientist was popularized. Relativity became increasingly accepted, to the point where we recite E=mc2 almost as a punchline. Though Einstein did not hold that his theory is purely relative, instead he believed the universe has a “sense”.
For Glissant, relativity “is not totalitarian”
The problem soon presented is cultural relativism and the belief that each culture has its own thing going and is essentially equivalent to all others. The issue with this is flattening, essentializing cultures as all alike in one way or another. Always searching for a universal model.
Through science’s obsession with defining the starting point of the universe, through ties to filiation linearity rises back up along with the idea of legitimacy. “A science of conquest”.
What Glissant claims is missing is another direction “which is not one”, following through on the process of relation. We need experimental, experiential inquiry. Seeing what is changing, dynamic, and following it down the rabbit hole to see what more it can present us with.
It is a recurrent encounter with our collective naïveté , a slap in the face every time we arrive at seemingly stable ground. Then a moment of “of course this was never really it! How could we be so stupid.”
Glissant lays out a science of chaos-monde, a mode of chaos. A science that “renounces linearity’s potent grip”, analyzes indeterminacy and measures accidents. A wide ranging chaotic science attempting to soak in all the difference and dynamic variation in the world. Otherwise, “the immeasurable intermixing of cultures”
It is naive to believe we can access the turbulent chaotic world through computer calculations and simulations. Computers analyzing chaos are invaded by it fractally descending in and upon itself, “It would be God.”
Glissant concludes this section on relation by asserting that only the human imagination “cannot be contaminated by its objects. This is because our creative minds infinitely differentiates. He ends with, “The highest point of knowledge is always a poetics.”