“Imagining and recreating from traces of memory removes a person far away from systems, far away not only from ideological thinking but even more from the thought of any imperative system. I would like to emphasize this point: imagining from and by traces is a more difficult but more fruitful exercise than thinking by systems. It seems that the ancient marronage, which was the quest for new traces, is once again operating, for all of us. In other words, ambiguity, discontinuity, traces, and remembering, creolization, with its unpredictable results, are not signs of weakness. They contribute to this unprecedented conception of identity that I have been discussing. They counter the massive assertions of the thinking associated with the Conquest.”

-Édouard Glissant, “Creolization in the Making of the Americas”