[On “worldmentality” and “departure”]
It’s the moment when one consents not to be a single being and attempts to be many beings at the same time.
In other words, for me, every diaspora is the passage from unity to multiplicity.
I think that’s what’s important in all the movements of the world, and we, the descendants, who have arrived from the other shore, would be wrong to cling fiercely to this singularity which had accepted to go out into the world.
Let us not forget that Africa has been the source of all kinds of diasporas—not only the forced diaspora imposed by the West through the slave trade, but also of millions of all types of diasporas before—that have populated the world.
One of Africa’s vocations is to be a kind of foundational Unity which develops and transforms itself into a Diversity.
And it seems to me, if we don’t think about that properly, we won’t be able to understand what we ourselves can do, as participants in this African diaspora, to help the world to realize its true self, in other words its multiplicity, and to respect it all.
ÉDOUARD GLISSANT.