The CLR James Journal

ONLINE FIRST

published on December 18, 2019

Benjamin P. Davis

The Politics of Édouard Glissant’s Right to Opacity

The central claim of this essay is that Édouard Glissant’s concept of “opacity” is most fruitfully understood not as a built-in protection of a population or as a summary term for cultural difference, but rather as a political accomplishment. That is, opacity is not a given but an achievement. Taken up in this way, opacity is relevant for ongoing decolonial work today.