Du fragment, du tout et de la clôture : Réflexions sur quelques stratégies artistiques contemporaines

The Gestalt Theory shows that an individual figure can only be understood in reference to its contextual background. In the domain of story lines, and more generally of sequential structuration, this puts the question of the relation between local facts and the framing whole, in particular in terms of teleology, that is the expectation of an end, be it in novels, in plays and in poems. Referring to the archeological levels in the text, levels to be found exemplified in the fairy tale and the epic, one may observe a whole spectrum of textual structuration, going from a commanding and imperative resolution of the plot and cf the text, to moderately deviant forms still conforming to the classical schemes of story-telling, to transgressive and subversive practices. Flann O'Brien's novels may seem to illustrate the latter category in which the normal reading operations concerning fragment v. whole are hampered, if not exploded ; which puts the question of the type of meaning finally constructed by the reader. Conversely, Howard Barker adopts another strategy in The Possibilities, a play in ten fragments which are conceived as absolutely autonomous though implicitly integrated in a demonstrative whole. One thus discovers that the specific nature of the relation established between fragment and whole— from linear and one-sided to reversible— offers the possibility of a critical insight into the actual workings of the text, and provides a central criterion, and a functional means, in view of the evaluation of what, in the final count, is being done to the reader.