Etymologies

pp. 153-175

in: Carrol Clarkson, J. M. Coetzee, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009

Abstract

Words and rocks contain a language that follows a syntax of splits and ruptures. Look at any word long enough and you will see it open up into a series of faults, into a terrain of particles each containing its own void. This discomforting language of fragmentation offers no easy gestalt solution; the certainties of didactic discourse are hurled into the erosion of the poetic principle. (Smithson, ‘A Sedimentation of the Mind’ 107)