A Poetics of the Fragment

Whether a precondition of poiesis, aisthesis and noesis, an ideological assumption, an elaborate artifice, a strategy of mystification, or a destabilising constellation of causes and effects, the fragment has shaped both Western and Eastern cultures, eliciting a staggering diversity of artistic, philosophical, theoretical and critical responses. From the ruins, remnants, scraps, shards, and incomplete manuscripts that survived from Antiquity, through the Renaissance humanism that prompted an investigation of somatic fragments, through the French moralists and Montaignes criture fragmentaire, via the eighteenth-century novelistic ars combinatoria, from Romanticism (which shifted the emphasis on the fragment as philosophical seedling' ripe with potentialities) to modernist and postmodernist ontologies and epistemologies, the fragment has been subjected to countless revisions and reevaluations in theoretical and critical studies (themselves often fragmentary). Given the persistence and ubiquity of the fragment, the variety of types, and its proliferation in our time, it is somewhat baffling that to the best of our knowledge no methodical, inclusive and multiperspectival approach to the fragment has been published yet. Under these circumstances, the present volume proposes a rigorous interdisciplinary and transhistorical examination of the fragment, ultimately seen as forma mentis. In addition to a critique of criticism in the field, This book offers descriptive and functional taxonomies, and the types of fragment identified are subsequently illustrated and analysed in a number of literary works and films, some of which have not been previously circumscribed to the sphere of the fragmentary (such as the pseudo-dictionary), or investigated from this perspective (The Sound and the Fury, The Shipping News, Memento). This book is addressed not only to teachers, students, and researchers of the phenomenology of this elusive and underrated genre, but also to all those intrigued or enchanted by the fragment(ary). Despre o poetica a fragmentului s-a scris, cel mai adesea, fie fragmentar, fie restrans (la o anumita epoca, o ideologie, dintr-o anume perspectiva). Tentativele de definire si sistematizare par a fi fost mereu sub vraja lacunarului, ca si cum magia fragmentului ar fi contaminat subversiv si discursul critico-teoretic, metamorfozandu-l in metafragment. Avand in vedere persistenta si ubicuitatea fragmentului, diversitatea tipurilor de fragment (de la ruina, fragment ceramic, sculptural, de manuscris, la opera neterminata din varii motive sau deliberat fragmentara, la schita, proiect, cadru individual, parte a unui intreg sau entitate de sine statatoare etc.) si proliferarea lui in contemporaneitate, este surprinzator ca, pana in prezent, nu s-a efectuat un studiu teoretic metodic si minutios. In aceste conditii, volumul de fata propune o riguroasa abordare interdisciplinara si transistorica a fragmentului, considerat, in ultima instanta, ca forma mentis, traversand filosofia romantica germana, literatura mai multor secole, cinematografia, artele plastice si expunerile teoretice cu privire la postmodernism, feminism si postcolonialism. Pe langa o 'critica a criticii' (o evaluare lucida a studiilor despre fragment / fragmentar publicate pana acum), A Poetics of the Fragment ofera si o taxonomie din punct de vedere descriptiv si functional. Tipurile de fragment identificate sunt ulterior ilustrate si examinate in opere literare si filme care fie nu au fost circumscrise anterior fragmentarului (de pilda, pseudo-dictionarul si jurnalul), fie nu au fost analizate din perspectiva fragmentului (Zgomotul si furia, Stiri de acasa, Memento s.a.). Acest volum se adreseaza nu numai profesorilor, studentilor si cercetatorilor, ci si tuturor celor interesati sau fascinati de fragment(ar).