In Tout-monde we read: ‘Nos identités se relaient, et par là seulement tombent en vaine prétention ces hiérarchies cachées […] Ne consentez pas à ces manoeuvres de l'identique […] Ouvrez au monde le champ de votre identité’ (p. 158). And in the course of an interview marking its publication in 1993, Glissant remarks, rather casually, ‘Les éditeurs appellent ça un roman, donc je pense que le public peut le considérer comme tel’. But he would clearly prefer not to have to assign it to any particular existing literary genre – and it is not hard to understand why. My starting point here is the juxtaposition of these two quotations. In other words, Tout-monde extends the critique of unitary identity that had become increasingly prominent in Glissant's work, exploring further the notion of plural, variable, relational personal identity; and at the same time it breaks down the boundaries that separate and distinguish the generic identities of novel, essay, autobiography, prose poem, travel writing, etc. This chapter will examine the possible connections between these two projects.

On a theoretical level they can be brought together via the notion of the rhizome, which Glissant takes from Deleuze and Guattari. His enthusiasm for the multiply proliferating ‘rhizome’ as against the singular ‘root’ is evident not only in Tout-monde – which is dedicated to the memory of Félix Guattari – but also in Poétique de la Relation, where he writes:

In the interview cited above, the opposition between root and rhizome is exploited more specifically in the context of national identity; Glissant says: