Zee, geschiedenis en non-geschiedenis: Glissants kritiek op logistiek vanuit de nasleep van de slavenhandel See, history, non-history: Glissantian counter-logistics in the Wake of the Middle Passage

This article explores Édouard Glissant’s concepts of history and non-history in the context of the Caribbean and the trans-Atlantic slave trade, emphasizing the sea as both historical archive and site of historical rupture. It highlights the paradox wherein the sea simultaneously preserves and erases historical memory, producing a breakdown of sedimentary or accumulative histories termed non-history. The article extends Glissant’s framework to contemporary logistics and global supply chains, revealing how modern maritime logistics embody a continuation of imperialist violence and fragmentation. By integrating critical studies on logistics with Glissant’s archipelagic thinking, it proposes a contra-logistical hermeneutic that is able to account for the tormented historicity of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, and recognise that historicity in the persistent disruptions and resistances within global trade networks today. Concepts of relation and opacity are central, underscoring the ethical imperative to acknowledge interconnected yet irreducible histories shaped by colonial violence. The article argues for a method of reading history that challenges totalizing historical accounts and offers a politically engaged perspective on the ongoing impacts of colonial and capitalist systems in maritime spaces.