- 01. Opacity
- In ‘Poetics of Relation’, Édouard Glissant defines opacity as that which cannot be fully known, reduced, or made transparent. He asserts a “right to opacity,” a right to difference and a refusal of the Western and colonial demand for legibility, total understanding, and assimilation. For Glissant, opacity is both a right and a condition of relation. This concept forms the foundation of my thesis.
- 02. Language
- Language is understood as a multilayered system of expression and communication that extends beyond words. Glissant conceives of language as a dynamic field shaped by history, context, affect, and the ongoing interplay of cultures.
- 03. Translation
- Translation preserves relation while resisting transparency. It is the continuous conversion of human expression into machine-legible data, a productive site of friction where qualitative, ambiguous, and contextual qualities of human life meet linear, discrete computational demands.
- 04. Mediation
- Mediation encompasses processes and infrastructures enabling interaction between humans and machines, including platforms, interfaces, systems, and data pipelines.
- 05. Computation
- Computation transforms inputs into outputs through formal rules, algorithmic procedures, and discrete operations, reducing phenomena into structured, manipulable units of data.
- 06. Latency
- Latency refers to delays, pauses, or intervals in computational processes. It functions as both a technical metric and a conceptual/philosophical condition.
Glossary
"Glossary: for readers from elsewhere, who don't deal very well with unknown words or who want to understand everything. But, perhaps to establish for ourselves, ourselves as well, the long list of words within us whose sense escapes or, taking this farther, to fix the syntax of this language we are babbling. The readers of here are future." — Édouard Glissant, Malemort, 231