The Incandescent I, Destroyer of Worlds

This article describes Césaire's work as the articulation of a poetics and politics of the universal. While he rightly celebrated the legacy and accomplishments of Afro-Atlantic cultures, these specificities never served to ground the ethical and political claims he made against global imperialism. From his initial invocation of Negritude on, Césaire's every intervention brought the claims of universal equality to bear on diverse planes of being, from the poetic to the political. In this light, the article returns to the Cahier d'un retour au pays natal and the article "Maintenir la poésie" to examine Césaire's singular fashioning of the universal against the backdrop of philosophers such as Heidegger and Badiou.