I was ambivalent about this piece. It made me think, but much of the discussion seemed toassume that very personal metaphoric uses of terms like “fragment” and “segment” had some kind of inter-personal validity, …which I doubt they had.\u00a0But still, it was interesting to think about how (or whether) you break an essay into pieces, and what sort of work that separation does. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Here is the original essay: https:\/\/hippocampusmagazine.com\/2022\/04\/craft-of-fragments-and-segments-by-heidi-czerwiec\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Some thoughts:<\/p>\n\n\n\n It appears that\u00a0the more white space \u2013 the less \u201cwhole\u201d the text appears<\/strong>, the more fragmented, the more visible the breakage \u2013 the more charged that space becomes for the reader.\u00a0That also means more work on the part of the reader<\/strong>. Ultimately, it doesn\u2019t seem to matter whether the reader considers the pieces segments or fragments<\/strong>. Views: 26<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I was ambivalent about this piece. It made me think, but much of the discussion seemed toassume that very personal metaphoric uses of terms like “fragment” and “segment” had some kind of inter-personal validity, …which I doubt they had.\u00a0But still, it was interesting to think about how (or whether) you break an essay into pieces, … Continue reading Thoughts on \u201cOf Fragments and Segments” by Heidi Czerwiec\u00a0<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"federate","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,39,50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-essays","category-craft-of-writing","category-things-ive-learned"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomeri.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomeri.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomeri.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomeri.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomeri.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3664"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/tomeri.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3664\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3668,"href":"https:\/\/tomeri.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3664\/revisions\/3668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomeri.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomeri.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomeri.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
First, the reading of \u201cfragment\u201d as \u201cto break\u201d seems etymologically valid, but the notion that breaking (in fragments) is somehow more violent the cutting (as in segment) is, at least on a physical level, dubious.
When things break \u2013 think about minerals, but it can apply to any material object \u2013 they break in accordance with their structures. Often this is because material objects have an intrinsic structure, that includes planes of ‘weakness’ along which they will fracture. When a material object \u201cbreaks,\u201d it breaks in the most ‘efficient’ way — it uses the minimal energy to break, and, when it breaks, it is releasing tension that is distorting the structure of the object. In contrast, cutting ignores internal structure, and imposes an external agenda on what is being done. Breaking is true to the structure of the object being broken; cutting ignores that structure, although in some cases, surgery for example, the surgeon may take that into account.\u00a0
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