Le Quatrième Siècle ­d’Édouard Glissant Réintroduire ­l’esclavage dans la mémoire pour penser le présent

Published in 1964, Le Quatrième Siècle marks a shift in the literary treatment of slavery. It turns the figure of the marron – the runaway slave – into a model, a defence against the inertia of a colonial society in transformation, anchored as it is in 1946, the year of departmentalisation. Adopting a diachronic perspective by way of genealogy, it illuminates the present through the past while refusing any order from, or simplification of, history.