THE FRAGMENT: IN AND OUT OF PERSPECTIVE

A lot has been said about the nature of the fragment; most often in its relation to a totality. But if the fragment is viewed from the perspective in which symmetry with a whole is missing, we discover that what we often take for granted - an undisturbed relation between parts and wholes - has to do with our imparting (un)divided attention to bits and pieces, rather than focusing on the big picture. In other words, putting things in a nutshell, making concise points and synthesizing theories, is more often than not, not the result of our exercising our capacity to think logically, but to think wittily. When the point works, that is. Or when the fragment fragments, as it were. Let's have more writing done - which uses the fragmentary form - to situate what is interesting in a thought in the combination between the mind that has a system and the one that has none. In an even more fragmented form, this means that what we are looking for here is a thought which is both able to be and become at the same time; a thought that is disastrous and continuous insofar as it is beyond our reach; a thought that gives us a feeling of vertigo as it goes towards infinity, stops there and yet expands. A thought that - as I've said - tends towards - but is already witty - and makes us laugh - creates physiognomies - defies gravity - makes us thin - axing us around a million dollar thought - which awaits grounding in the economy and materiality of writing.

Comments

Anonymous said…
'Infinity always gives me vertigo', as Bruce Cockburn sings in the lyrics to "Mystery"... (I feel the same way about philosophy, although frequently I am closer to nausea than to vertigo. Anyway, that is neither here nor there, or - as it were - in or out of this world.) Mainly I enjoy the mental image of you standing outside the universe looking in, with your nose pressed against the window to infinity...

- this feast of beauty can intoxicate...

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