Fragment
Somewhere, Hakim Bey once suggested that it is only a fragmented theory that can do justice to a fragmented reality.
Among other things, a fragment is a residue not entirely covered over by time. Its presence is unsettling. It invites us to excavate for another to which it may retell its story. Its misshapen contour triggers in us a sense of ambiguity, of dislocation, of something that does not belong to the here and now. A fragment is a knot and a complication. Abstraction hopes to conceal its pressure but, inevitably, the crack is laid bare. The complication becomes a pointer to a parallel yet unspoken, perhaps even unspeakable.
Memory is often called upon to reconstitute the fragment in such a way that it is no longer jarring. Recollection hints of a loss not only of what was but also of what might have been or has yet to be. In the meantime, the fragment remains crucial; it is an anchor much as the mark of a question that requires the stability of the solitary dot beneath the curve. Ironically though, the fragment is stressed by the typographical gesture. It is brought to the fore with the convenient separation between riddle and solution, mostly as a pretext for further riddling.
The fragment is now a link in the chain it previously interrupted. Rather than merely assimilated, it is charged with the task of securing a malleable continuity, of assuming a function, utilitarian perhaps, or maybe even anaclitic. The sequence and hierarchy associated with such an arrangement are much less static than generally granted.
The fragment for its part remains neither formal enough to satisfy the requirements of academic discourse, nor immediate and conclusive enough to be of any particular use to those so-called frontline activists in search of strategies or solutions. Perhaps this renders it duplicitous in its inactivity or thoughtlessness, depending on the side of the purity divide from which one wishes to approach it. This, perhaps, lends it the possibility of engaging, once again, in new forms of thought or action, arrogant at times, and yet fully aware of their aleatory micro-political and/or micro-theoretical relevance and limitations.
29 October 2007 at 3:05 pm
A fragment is a knot [...] or maybe even anaclitic.
Does a fragment call out to other fragments?
Did you know that the question mark is also called “eroteme”?
Not all languages have the curve-with-dot shape to the sign for a question mark…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Question_mark#Other_languages
what bearing might this have on the analogy being drawn between a fragment and a question? i.e. is the inquisitive character of the fragment and its anchoring function historically and culturally determined?
10 November 2007 at 11:25 am
Francois;
I really love that “eroteme” bit; thank you. It reminds me of a most beautiful passage from Cixous’s “Tancredi Continues” that goes:
As for your question re cultural and historical determination, I would assume the answer is in the affirmative. But then again, there is something not so timed and timely about the fragment and I hesitate to say that it is only we, at our point in history that read it as a question.