Creolising Conviviality: Thinking Relational Ontology and Decolonial Ethics Through Ivan Illich and Édouard Glissant

Abstract

Following Ivan Illich and Édouard Glissant, this chapter aims to discuss the conceptual and visionary implications of creolising conviviality. It does so by first providing an account of Illich’s concept of “conviviality” in terms of its material and ethical underpinning. Second, it looks at contemporary empirical research on conviviality in order to understand the complexities that this perspective sets out to study. Third, the chapter establishes that conviviality needs to be placed in relation to Glissant’s creolisation, a visionary outlook of an antagonistic living together. Creolisation as a rhizomatic relational conceptualisation of society departs from the critical understanding of contemporary societies as entrenched in historically produced racialised hierarchies, resulting in economic and social inequalities which impede living together based on equal economic distribution and social justice. The chapter concludes with some thoughts on a decolonial ethics of creolising conviviality.