Stages of coloniality

Abstract

The theatrical trilogy Le Monde incréé offers a condensed vision of Édouard Glissant’s conception of the post-Columbian world. The latter, shaped through the tremendous violence of exterminations, slavery, and colonial expansion, is marked by a coloniality in three stages: conquest, subjugation, abolition. Taking a deliberate distance from historical methods of apprehending human time, Glissant’s trilogy (much like most of his work) builds on a ‘prophetic vision of the past’ to explore the lived experience of this coloniality, as well as the ways in which, despite the latter’s staying power, a creolized world emerges from seemingly insurmountable abyssal origins.