Writing Wednesday: More on Fragments

Over the past couple weeks I’ve been revisiting Nora Goldschmidt’s Fragmentary Modernism: The Classical Fragment in Literary and Visual Cultures, c.1896 – c.1936 (2024). It has me thinking about fragments again and how they might be relevant for rethinking how we approach digital practices in archaeology (and this is for the conference, “The Digital, The Archaeological, and the Ethical” at the Center for Hellenic Studies in mid-September). I’ve decided that I want to introduce my paper by entwining three concepts of fragments. The first, is drawn from folks like Goldschmidt and their reading of modernism more broadly. This will focus on the experience of a fragmented reality. This manifest, say, in Imagist poetry, in the Arcades of Benjamin, in the music of Igor Stravinsky, and the art of Picasso. Cultural critics bold enough to essay an interpretation of fragmentation often see it as a product of accelerating speed, growing alienation, and industrialization. The sense of a fragmented…