A book analyses ’The Logic of the Fragment’ in terms of narrative

In terms of creation, standardised discourse conceives the fragment as a residue of totality and understands totality (of an artistic work, for example) as closure, the conclusion, the truth. In the book La lógica del fragmento. Arte y subversión (The Logic of the Fragment. Art and subversion), (Pre-Textos, 2022), Pilar Carrera, professor at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M), analyses the fragment as a space for the emergence of meaning and significance. This analysis breaks away from the idea that the fragment is part of a totality and places it as an autonomous discursive structure, not only from an aesthetic dimension, but also from a theoretical and political one: "Standardised discourse on the fragment, which morally rejects it as a residue of totality, comes from the belief in the truth as conclusiveness", the book notes. However, "in contrast to the reassuring closure, the fragment points to absence understood as a space where meaning unfolds, not to memory or mourning for a ruined totality. Absence is the substratum that allows us to undertake this operation of meaning that the fragment conveys".