Transparency allows the colonizer to place the other as an object of knowledge, but there is no exploitation if you are hidden.

Opacity is a right to not be understood, to escape the masters normative control and is active resistance to the colonial gaze. Only an understanding that allows for opacity is able to avoid the control
elia !.

Britton 99

"douard #lissant and $ostcolonial Theory %trategies of &anuage and 'esistance pp. ()*(+

"opacity." Respect for the Other includes respect for the "opacity" of the Other's difference, objectify it. "The poetics of relation presuppose that each of us encounters the density the more expressi e his reality becomes, and the more fruitful the relation becomes " !"#, $%&. Relation thus safe'uards the Other's difference( it is "the " cannot reduce the Other to my norms, nor can " become the Other, )cceptin' the Other's opacity means also acceptin' that there are no truths that apply permanently. *9 Relation and opacity wor+ to'ether to resist the reducti eness of humanism. , in defiance of a uni ersali,in' and reducti e humanism, . "n the world of -Relation., which ta+es o er from the homo'eneity of -essence., to accept this opa/ueness that is, the irreducible density of the other is to truly accomplish, throu'h di ersity, a human objecti e. 0umanity is perhaps not the 1ima'e of man' but today the e er'rowin' networ+ of reco'ni,ed opa/ue structures" 2e must fi'ht a'ainst transparence
Relation as a whole is also intimately connected to another of Glissant's main theoretical concepts:

which resists one,s attempts to

assimilate or

(the opacity) of the Other. The more

the Other resists in his thickness or his fluidity (without restricting himself to this),

welcome

opa-ueness, through which the other escapes

me" (CD, 162). Therefore, just as

conversely

in the kind of exoticizing identification that Glissant attributes to Segalen (of whom he writes that "personally I believe he died of the Other's opacity," PR, 208).

universally or

Le discours antillais speaks of the need " to develop everywhere

the theory of specifically opa-ue structures

(CD, 133). In this sense opacity becomes a militant position, so that Glissant can state unequivocally, "

e erywhere" !3), 456&, and claim that opacity is a ri'ht7 "2e demand for all the ri'ht to opacity" !
equates opacity simply with freedom: '' (CD, 256). More controversially, also a

PR, 209). Finally, on the last page of Le discours an tillais, he

''their -opacity., which is nothin', after all, but their freedom opacity is defense a'ainst the objectifyin' way in which this usually operates between the 2est and the Third 2orld the mechanism whereby 2estern readin's of the 8aribbean project onto it "do'mas and methods" that are rele ant only to 2estern so cieties, and so "they 'et into the habit of definin' the 8aribbean in terms of its resistance to the different methodolo'ies summoned to in esti'ate it The ri'ht to opacity is more fundamental than the ri'ht to difference is a ri'ht not to be understood . ""f we loo+ at the process of 1understandin'' bein's and ideas as it operates in western society, we find that it is founded on an insistence on this +ind of transparency. "n order to 1understand' and therefore accept you, " must reduce your density to this scale of conceptual measurement which 'i es me a basis for comparisons and perhaps for jud'ements" !$9%&. "n other words, understandin' appears as an act of a''ression because it constructs the Other as an object of +nowled'e. "n the etymolo'y of the erb "comprendre" -to understand( the root of wh ich, prendre, means to ta+e., :lissant discerns a 'esture of "ta+in'" the world and brin'in' it bac+ to oneself7 ") 'esture of enclosure if not of appropriation" !$96&. $* ;pi a+'s term for this is "epistemic iolence. it characteri,es the imperialist project but also continues to operate in postcolonial societies to exclude and silence subaltern 'roups inside and outside the circuits of the epistemic iolence of imperialist law and education supplementin' an earlier economic text , can the subaltern spea+<" recei es a lar'ely ne'ati e answer7 the subaltern cannot "spea+'' in the sense of directly and unproblematically ma+in' his or her oice heard within the dominant social discourse subaltern consciousness is opa/ue in that it cannot be "read" by the rulin' 'roups :lissant interprets this as a form of resistance the lac+ of lan'ua'e, as a passi ely determined condition, and opacity as an acti e strate'y of resistance a strate'y that assumes lac+ and transforms it into a positi e force the subaltern's exclusion does not cause any problems for the dominant discourse as lon' as it remains in isible to that discourse, but if it can be made isible as exclusion, it will constitute a locus of resistance to the discourse's appropriation of it( it will become opa/ue opacity is a acti e, positi e form of resistance But the relationship between colonial master and sla e is not limited to a purely rational exercise of power. "t is widely reco'ni,ed to include also a dimension of unconscious desire and fear. opacity is not simply a practical, rational strate'y on the part of the coloni,ed, but a constituent of their collecti e unconscious the interchan'eability of the two forms of power that is, sur eillance and intimidation, seein' and bein' seen and the ease with which one crosses o er into the other are also reminiscent of the re ersibility of the psychic dri es , in the colonial relationship, relate to a domination that 'oes beyond conscious, rational concerns of imposin' or eludin' control #ower and pleasure mer'e to'ether, in "the peculiar isibility of the nature of colonial power ," to result in a form of exhibitionism is this exhibitionism that exceeds the narrowly practical aim of imposin' control. , it that is the reason for the coloni,ed subject's desire for opacity. This desire is pro o+ed not by the 'a,e of the master but by the exa''erated "transparent" isibility of his presence not the master as all=seein ', but the master as seen7 "The only source of li'ht ultimately was that of the transcendental presence of the Other, of his >isibility coloni,er or administrator of his transparency fatally proposed as a model, and for the need to see+ out -opacity."
understanding, at least in hierarchical, illustrated, for instance, in Bentez-Rojo's sardonic description of ."20 , which Glissant claims (PR, 204-5), In this section (entitled "Pour l'opacit" [For opacity]) of Potique de la relation, he writes: " She argues that not only , that is, those outside the new bourgeois nationalist ruling class. Her question "on the other side of the international division of labour from socialized capital, .22 Thus, for Spivak as for Glissant, . But whereas , for Spivak it is merely a form of disempowerment. However, this contrast is in turn complicated by Glissant's equally strong sense of the difficult relationship the subaltern has with language per se the ''lack" o f language considered in my next chapter which can be seen as another formulation of the subaltern's inability to speak and one that is closer, although not identical, to Spivak's. But he also posits a dynamic relationship between (in ways that are discussed in chapter 2). This can be translated into Spivak's terms as follows: , in Glissant's sense. Indeed, some of Spivak's own analyses of particular cases show this process in operation and thus counteract the impression of total powerlessness that her general formulations sometimes give.23 Even so, Glissant's still far more than Spivak's theorization allows for. To sum up the difference simply, Spivak focuses more on the subaltern's inability to "speak" the dominant discourse whereas Glissant focuses more on the dom inant discourse's inability to "understand" the subaltern. (since Joseph Conrad's The Heart of Darkness, if not before) Similarly, in "Poetics and the Unconscious" Glissant makes it clear that (CD, 159). It is thus not surprising that analyzed by Sigmund Freud. Indeed, one of Freud's main examples is the relation between voyeurism and exhibitionism, the two closely connected variants of the scopic drive. %ight and visibility and includes a strong element of unconscious fantasy. in the way outlined by Bhabha his analysis of Significantly , rather than the colonizer's powers of surveillance, as common sense might dictate, given in "Poetics and the Unconscious'' as because of which we have acquired a taste for obscurity, me