by Camelia Elias

“Criticism”, Giorgio Agamben writes, “has three levels: philologico-hermeneutic, physiognomic, and gestic. Of these three levels, which can be described as three concentric spheres, the first is dedicated to the work’s interpretation; the second situates the work (both in historical and natural orders); the third revolves the work’s intention into a gesture (or into a constellation of gestures). It can be said that every authentic critic moves through all three fields, pausing in each of them according to his own temperament.”

This quotation from Agamben’s collected essays on potentialities reflects with accuracy something significant about the idea of pausing. What Agamben means to say is that critical thinking is not contingent on the number of levels one can go through, but on the act of pausing. The most obvious and banal observation would be to say that between this or that level there is always a pause. So we have pause as space marked by punctuation or the lack of it, and pause as thinking. Thinking here enters a relation with the act of criticism especially when it is prompted by pausing. Now, pausing according to one’s temperament is performing an act similar to the fragment’s performance. Insofar as pausing is done in relation to a whole, it is itself a fragment, yet not a fragment which can be defined, to be sure, but a fragment which constitutes itself as a gesture of writing a text which is above all the understanding of a concept.

Understanding the concept of ‘fragment’ is first and foremost a question of style. For how is one to approach that which only exists in a state of plurality? The etymology of the word ‘fragment’ indicates that much. The word derives from the Latin fragmentum, remnant, whose root, frangere, means to break into fragments. One of the aspects of the root frangere is that it points to a necessary plurality of fragments, since it is logically impossible to break a whole into one fragment. Most definitions drawing upon the above etymology, presuppose, formally speaking, that a relation between the part and the whole is constitutive of the notion of the fragment. The consequence of defining the fragment in terms of a part/whole relation is that the fragment is always seen as derived from and subordinate to an original whole text.

From Heraclitus onwards an entire research tradition on the fragment has tended to focus on the fragment’s (ruined) form and (incomplete) content. In spite of the fact that the body of literature on the fragment is varied and vast a pertinent question can still be asked. What if the fragment is more than a part/whole relation? Before attempting to answer the question, if there are any answers, one is tempted to follow closely in the steps of Emile Cioran, who said, for example, that “a distinct idea is an idea with no future”. I believe that much of the appeal to the fragment relies on the fact that one can never be sure. Consequently, answering the question, ‘what is a fragment?’ requires a language which would articulate the problematics of the fragment in ways appropriate to it. When it comes to the fragment, I say it with Cioran: “certainties have no style”. The fragment demands, however, that one speaks about it with the urgency of all styles, which is rigour. The fragment always begins in a state of being (im)proper and gradually becomes a necessary impropriety of the proper.

Improperly speaking, then, I propose here an alternative – obviously in a truncated form – to the growing body of definitions on the fragment by suggesting that the fragment be read aphoristically in a historical perspective, as well as be seen as a label of various fragments in generic terms. The improper fragment is a function of various types of fragments that function performatively.

Defining the fragment is a performative gesture towards making sure that the ideas put forth have a future in the sense that they are open to the criticism in the study of the fragment’s literariness. Pausing to think about what constitutes the fragment in terms of form is linked to the question of what makes the fragment literature. The temperament dictates, that the fragment is that which it becomes in a thesis. We therefore negotiate what the fragment is and what is its potential to become so that we avoid ending up in Stanislaw Jerzy Lec’s dictum: “In a war of ideas it is people who get killed”.

Ten Theses on the Fragment

by Camelia Elias

The fragment creates a labyrinth – text-ruins, where it suffices to trace the distance covered in order for the ruins to be revealed,

erased by the living monument that one had at first forgotten.

Michel Pierssens, Detachment (1981)

The fragment is a-historical, yet without being contextless. Insofar as the fragment is, however, not without a history, the fragment is thus coercive.

The Coercive Fragment Traced through Heraclitus

The fragment which is not an effect is a coercive fragment.

The coercive fragment, while mediating between the positions of philosophers, philologists, fiction writers and literary critics, performs their statements in the same way a force is able to evolve a form.

The fragment generates itself always as others’ writings.

The fragment is an act of the imagination which shows the unworkability of ‘knowing’ what a whole text is.

With Nietzsche in mind, the Heraclitean coercive fragment manifests itself in the hammering on one’s aesthetic will, so that one’s imagination will resonate in and reverberate beyond one’s head.

The coercive fragment has the writer in a subordinate position. Insofar as one cannot help quoting, the quotation becomes a dominant.

The pulsating force of the coercive fragment is its ineluctable dominance over the artist’s choice, making him revise interminably.

The fragment is a thematic cause which constitutes a work’s original effect.

The fragment is its own master.

The fragment is a spanking of totalities.

The fragment is a-form, yet without being inconsistent. Insofar as theorizing on the fragment begins not with a consideration of form, but in a consent to acknowledge the fragment’s nature, the fragment is thus consensual.

The Consensual Fragment Traced through Schlegel

The fragment’s idea is not to grasp completeness.

The fragment is a constant figuration of the question, ‘why write in fragments?’

The fragment is directly linked to wit, or the margin of ‘nothing’.

The form of the fragment is interesting to the extent that it guards against having the fragment mean ‘nothing’.

The fragment is a means of writing and rewriting the difference that ‘nothing’ poses, either as an exigency or an imperative.

The fragment is the instance when wit mediates between authorship and form.

When the fragment is ‘wise’, it is also ‘beautiful’.

The fragment is not a question of (un)intended sayings.

The fragment’s identity is totality transcending its subject.

The fragment performs and enacts its own authorial theory.

The fragment sends authors of all kinds on a round trip, not just down, but also up the Heraclitean river.

The fragment which is, is the fragment which becomes – ens realissimum.

The fragment is a hermeneutics of suspicion.

The fragment is functional: its incompleteness marks the totality or the wholeness of another fragment – pluralities.

The romantic fragment is the fragment universalis, neither concept, nor genre, but a mode of interpretation.

The consensual fragment, insofar as it is universal, is a manifestation of differing interpretations of genre, which is to say that the consensual fragment does not consent to being a genre.

III

The fragment’s form is realized in a project of self-definition, yet without being complete. Insofar as the fragment which begins as a potential is fully realized, the fragment is thus redundant.

The Redundant Fragment Traced through Louis Aragon

The fragment is a generator of principles, which means that it situates itself outside the domain of the aesthetic.

The fragment is incompatibility’s project of self-definition.

The redundant fragment is a fragmentary representation of the image in the mirror of difference and definition.

The modernist fragment is a statutory impossibility, a textual clown.

The fragment maintains the tension between form and content as “sameness”, yet without being unnecessary. Insofar as the fragment is a marker of sameness, it cannot at the same time be potential. The fragment is thus repetitive.

The Repetitive Fragment Traced through Gertrude Stein

The fragment is the fragment is the fragment.

The repetitive fragment is the dream of a thought of action.

The modernist fragment is a repetition and ritualization of the process of writing it.

The repetitive fragment is ambiguous about what it does not consent to do.

The repetitive fragment has the potential to become an unnecessary masterpiece.

The modernist fragment is a paradigmatic catalogue for thinking.

The modernist fragment is of verbs rather than nouns.

The fragment’s content is actualized in a process of intercalation, yet without being discontinuous. Insofar as the fragment annihilates potentiality, the fragment is thus resolute.

The Resolute Fragment Traced through Emile Cioran

The fragment is an autobiography of the incurable.

The fragment is essentially different from the full text as it is able to both actualize a full text’s completeness and survive that actuality in becoming a totality itself.

The modernist fragment is the potential of a thought to be ghost-written in a mirror, or the potential to define what is contrary to one’s mission.

The modernist fragment is the gnomic voice of the incurable stylist.

The fragment is a-religious, yet without being unimaginative. Insofar as the fragment is a copy in the image of what represents it, the fragment is and thus becomes ekphrastic.

The Ekphrastic Fragment Traced through Mark C. Taylor

The fragment is the metaphor for both the philosopher and his influence.

The fragment is its own space; the fragment is the ‘whole’ text.

The fragment is a renunciation of the system.

Self-realization of the fragment is only possible via de-negation in an empty mirror.

The space of the fragment is the trace of enunciation.

The fragment following a ‘full’ text is the eye which ‘sees’ interpretation as plastic.

The fragment is an unpredictable statement on the opacity of the text.

The fragment is in the beginning precisely by virtue of its being repeated.

The fragment is already interpreting interpretation.

The fragment is a paradigmatic application of “atheology” to the syntagmatic self-aware image of theology.

The fragment is the application of the image to the copy.

The ekphrastic fragment works as the trace which begins its trajectory where the text ends ‘writerly’ and begins ‘visually’.

The ekphrastic plastic fragment opposes argumentation. Syllogisms are in transit.

The fragment’s enunciation is but in the form of a syllogism.

The fragment’s opaque self-description is the portrait of the textual surface.

The fragment becomes a portrait of its own depiction, invoking the baroque mode in a double sense, first as a discourse on representation and then as a meta-discourse on embellishing representation.

The fold engages in departing but never arrives.

The text unfolds in the fragment, the fragment is the system that is renounced.

The fragment’s referent becomes the fold within the fold.

The fragment as the fold is the empty mirror.

VII

The fragment is an-authorial, yet without being a manifestation with no scene of authorial representation. Insofar as the fragment disclaims the authority of the writer and writes itself as non-text, the fragment is and thus becomes epigrammatic.

The Epigrammatic Fragment Traced through Marcel Bénabou

Before the fragment is, it is a problem.

The fragment is defined by the questions that one asks.

The fragment is a piece of a hypothetical text.

The fragment is fleeting and therefore impossible to ‘construe well’.

The epigrammatic fragment is a displayed pseudo-figuration of authorship.

VIII

The fragment is a-textual, yet without being a re-collection of quotes in translation. Insofar as the fragment is a variation theme to a text whose ground is not signed, the fragment is and thus becomes epigraphic.

The Epigraphic Fragment Traced through Gordon Lish and Jacques Derrida

The fragment is not a name but a mask.

The fragment is the king of the text whether by constitution or self-proclamation.

Asking the fragment a question means subordinating oneself to its answers.

The fragment begins with a textualization of its own form: where the epigraph, or epigram interprets, the fragment that contains them textualizes by performing them.

The fragment is the emblematic epigraph of the fragmentary text.

Waiting can be thought of as a fragment of an act, always on the threshold of an act.

The epigraphic fragment is a fait accompli.

The epigraphic fragment is both a paradigmatic and syntagmatic signature.

The epigraphic fragment is the oracular voice of the text on the telephone.

Derrida remembers the fragment because the telephone rings. The fragment is always an epigraphic mise-en-abyme.

The fragment is a-contextual, yet without being non-eventful in its self-contradictions. Insofar as the fragment breaks its symbolic frame, the fragment is and thus becomes emblematic.

The Emblematic Fragment Traced through Avital Ronell and Nicole Brossard

The fragment is a true idler, walking among texts, contexts, and questions. It is here that the fragment meets epigraphs, epigrams, and emblems, and lets itself be charmed by them, defined by them.

The fragment is what it is because it aspires to definition. Ultimately then what defines the fragment is its own face, its own epi(grimasse)tic performance.

The performative fragment is the emblematic dance of theory.

The emblematic fragment is theory’s picture of itself.

The fragment is the mise-en-abyme-éclatée representation of its own hypothesis.

The fragment is the emblematic mise-en-abyme-éclatée of exposing fiction to reality.

There is no such thing as a fragment unless it is ekphrastic, epigrammatic, epigraphic, emblematic, ad predicam.

The fragment is a-definable, yet representational of a universal textual voice. Insofar as the fragment is both representational and universal, and marks a textual wholeness ‘after life’, the fragment is and thus becomes epitaphic.

The Epitaphic Fragment Traced through David Markson

The postmodern fragment is a condensation of texts upon texts, intertexts upon intertexts, beginnings upon endings, fragmentary writing with a foot in the grave.

The fragment is the universal stepping stone in the Heraclitean textual river of completeness.

The fragment acquires the function of the epitaph to perform beyond the grave the ‘complete’ text’s last rights/rites.

The epitaphic fragment is the complete text’s undone doing.

The epitaph re-inscribes the text’s message ‘on the whole’ within an economy of voice extrapolated from the text’s message ‘in part’. The epitaph is then able to present itself as the text’s manifestation of a potential for completeness.

The epitaphic fragment is the matrix of the complete text’s voice beyond the grave. Saving the text is a matter of the epitaph.

Let the epitaph undo the repetition!

The function of the epitaphic fragment is to perform silence. The epitaph is a false oracle.

The epitaphic fragment is in the process of emerging out of nothing. It is thus not ‘nothing’ that needs to be examined, but the fragments that have ‘nothing’ rest in peace.

Truth is a matter of epitaphic dialectics.

The epitaphic fragment is a cortege following the complete text.

Every epitaphic question becomes its own answer.

The epitaphic fragment speaks for itself.

∼

(The Fragment is a Thesis)

…

References:

Aragon, Louis (1991), Treatise on Style, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln & London (trans. by Alyson Waters from Traité du Style, 1928, Éditions Gallimard)

Bénabou, Marcel (1998), Why I Have Not Written Any of My Books, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln & London, (trans. from Pourquoi je n'ai écrit aucun de mes livres (Textes du 20e siècle, Hachette, Paris 1986) by David Kornacker)

Brossard, Nicole (1991) Picture Theory, Guernica, Montreal (trans. from the French by Barbara Godard, Picture Theory, 1982, Éditions Nouvelle Optique)

Cioran, E.M. (1983), Drawn and Quartered, The Arcade Cioran, Arcade Publishing, New York, (trans. by Richard Howard from Ecartèlement, 1971, Editions Gallimard)

Cioran, E.M. (1991), Anathemas and Admiration, The Arcade Cioran, Arcade Publishing, New York, (trans. by Richard Howard from Aveux et Anathèmes, 1986, Editions Gallimard)

Cioran E.M. (1999), All Gall is Divided, The Arcade Cioran, Arcade Publishing, New York, (trans. by Richard Howard from Syllogismes de l’amertume, 1952, Editions Gallimard)

Davenport, Guy (1995/1976), 7 Greeks, New Directions Books, New York

Derrida, Jacques (1987), The Post Card – From Socrates to Freud and Beyond, University of Chicago press, Chicago & London (trans. by Alan Bass)

Kirk, G.S. ed. (1970), Heraclitus – The Cosmic Fragments, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

Lish, Gordon (1996), Epigraph, Four Walls Eight Windows, New York & London

Markson, David (1988), Wittgenstein’s Mistress, Dalkey Archive Press, Illinois State University

Markson, David (1996), Reader’s Block, Dalkey Archive Press, Chicago

Markson, David (2001), This Is Not a Novel, Counterpoint, Washington, DC

Ronell, Avital (1989), The Telephone Book – Technology, Schizophrenia, Electric Speech, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln & London

Schlegel, Friedrich, (1991), Philosophical Fragments, University of Minnesota Press, Minnesota

Stein, Gertrude (1975), How to Write, Dover Publications, Inc., New York

Taylor, Mark C. (1982), Deconstructing Theology, The Crossroads Publishing Company & Scholars Press, New York

Taylor, Mark C. (1987), Altarity, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago & London

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