ABSTRACT
The focus of the chapter is on metaphors of territorial dismemberment and on botanic metaphors that stress multi-rootedness in connection with cultural and linguistic creolization. The territorial fragmentation of the archipelago (Édouard Glissant) questions the unity of the continent, and the organic and spatial metaphors of the rhizome (Deleuze and Guattari), the coral (Khal Torabully), the mangrove (Maryse Condé) and the banyan tree criticize the verticality of the tree. These different metaphors pursue a similar theoretical agenda based on openness, uncentredness and multiplicity that distances itself more or less explicitly from the European notions of nation, national territory, national language and single-rootedness discussed in chapters six and eleven. In some cases, the metaphorical connection with the linguistic domain is explicitly stated, in others it is tacitly subsumed under a cultural interpretation. My intention is to focus on the conceptual side of these metaphors and to explore their epistemological potential for a different understanding of multilingualism.
