Treatise on the Whole-world

This challenging book covers a wide range of subject matter, but all linked together through the key ideas of diversity and 'Relation'. It sees our modern world, shaped by immigration and the aftermath of colonisation, as a multiplicity of different communities interacting and evolving together, and argues passionately against all political and philosophical attempts to impose uniformity, universal or absolute values. This is the 'Whole-World', which includes not only these objective phenomena but also our consciousness of them. Our personal identities are not fixed and self-sufficient but formed in 'Relation' through our contacts with others. Glissant constantly stresses the unpredictable, 'chaotic' nature of the world, which, he claims, we must adapt to and not attempt to limit or control.