Le genre comme absence de genre

Abstract

The premise of this article is that hybridization (understood as a special blend of theoretical and literary discourse) has asserted itself most strongly in the fragmentary form of modernist and, above all, postmodernist writing. Despite numerous transformations, it is still evident that this is tied to the romantic fragment by more than may be apparent at first glance. It therefore seems that the romantic fragment deserves special attention: viewed from today’s postmodern perspective, it caused a revolution in the conception of the relationship between philosophy and literature, and between theoretical and poetic language. Romantic thinking revolved incessantly around a task that could not be completed: to create a perfect, universal work of art, the genre of which remained an enigma. In concrete works of art this genre would be present in the mode of absence. The fragment should figure as the embodiment of this absence. The fragment, be it romantic or modern, is therefore a paradoxical form: it is a literary genre and at the same time it is not. Perhaps this is what makes the fragment so suitable for observing the two-hundred-year process of intersection and coexistence of poetic and theoretical discourse.