ABSTRACT
Chapter 3 explores the reception and interpretation of fragmented narratives, broadly arguing that the fragmentation of narrative multiplies interpretive possibilities. It begins by considering the hermeneutic concepts of dialogue and distance, drawing on Gadamer and Ricoeur, to argue that social media narrative is both semantically autonomous and defined by dialogue. I then turn to the importance of recognising that most everyday interpretation is inattentive, drawing on Frosh (2019) to caution against the ‘attentional fallacy’. This is followed by an analysis of the creative input required from readers for narrative fragments to be comprehensible. Drawing on literary theory, I propose that fragmentation goes beyond the limited ‘gaps’ typically found in fictional literature, demanding a truly ‘writerly’ approach to reading. The chapter concludes with a discussion of authorship, proposing that the ‘author-function’, as described by Foucault (2003), has an ambivalent status with fragmented narratives, at times acting as a key point of unity and at others largely fading away.
