Sylvie and Édouard Glissant's intention was not to add hypotheses to those many that have attempted to pierce the mystery of Easter island. They wanted to touch imaginatively the stirring of a place that is both primordial and yet so contemporary, tormented and yet liberated, solitary and yet not alone, whose population, descended from a unique and legendary stock, today enjoys a peaceful existence based on its very diversity and its relationship with the world. Sylvie Glissant, during her stay there, assembled notes, drawings, photos, films, which she then discussed with Édouard Glissant. The volume presents what is essential in their collaboration.

Poet, philosopher and writer, Édouard Glissant (1928-2011) introduced the notion of antillanité as a way of reconsidering the world as archipelago. A Martinican thinker of the creolization of cultures and the poetics of relation, his multi-faceted oeuvre moves between the essay (Faulkner, Mississippi), poetry (The Indies), fiction (The Fourth Century) and theatre (Monsieur Toussaint). In 1958, he was awarded the Prix Renaudot for The Ripening. Édouard Glissant taught in the United States at Louisiana State University and at the City University in New York. In 2006, he founded the Institut du Tout-Monde in Paris.

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Sylvie Séma-Glissant is a painter and psychoanalyst. She heads the Institut du Tout-Monde, founded by Édouard Glissant.

Sylvie Séma-Glissant's profile page

Nathanaël is the author of more than a score of books written in English or in French, including Je Nathanaël (2018); Pasolini's Our (2018); Feder (2016); Sotto l'immagine (2014) and Sisyphus, Outdone: Theatres of the Catastrophal (2012). The French-language notebooks, Carnet de désaccords (2009), Carnet de délibérations (2011), and Carnet de somme (2012) were recast in English in a single volume as The Middle Notebookes (2015), which received the inaugural Publishing Triangle Award for Trans and Gender-Variant Literature.The essay of correspondence, Absence Where As (Claude Cahun and the Unopened Book) (2009) was first published in French as L'absence au lieu (2007). Nathanaël's work has been translated into Basque, Greek, Slovene, and Spanish (Mexico), with book-length publications in Bulgarian and Portuguese (Brazil). The recipient of the Prix Alain-Grandbois for ...s'arrête? Je (2008), Nathanaël's translations include works by Édouard Glissant, Catherine Mavrikakis, and Hilda Hilst (the latter in collaboration with Rachel Gontijo Araújo). Nathanaël's translation of Murder by Danielle Collobert was a finalist for a Best Translated Book Award in 2014. Her translation of The Mausoleum of Lovers by Hervé Guibert has been recognized by fellowships from the PEN American Center and the Centre National du Livre de France. Nathanaël lives in Chicago.

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