{"id":26291,"date":"2026-10-23T16:04:41","date_gmt":"2026-10-23T14:04:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.palazzostrozzi.org\/?p=26291"},"modified":"2026-10-23T16:53:33","modified_gmt":"2026-10-23T14:53:33","slug":"facing-the-fragment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.palazzostrozzi.org\/en\/facing-the-fragment\/","title":{"rendered":"Facing the Fragment"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

When Roland Barthes published “A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments” in 1977, he made a seemingly senseless gesture: rather than telling a love story from beginning to end, he chose to catalog it in alphabetical order, in splinters, entries and exclamations. In fact, the sense Barthes chose is the only one truly capable of capturing the reality of love stories: to write about love, Barthes explains, means confronting the jumble of language itself: a confused region where words are always both too many and too few, excessive and poor at the same time1<\/a><\/sup>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyone who has lived through the end of a relationship knows this jumble well: the obsession with going over, word for word, half-sentences said by mistake in a parking lot, misread glances, broken promises. Faced with a breakup, we never remember a story in its entirety; we hold on only to rough, decontextualized fragments, around which we build elaborate scaffolding to justify to ourselves why it had to go exactly that way. We often feel the need to restore that fragment, inventing whole parts of it or framing only what confirms our version, just to give a complete meaning to what remains unresolved. What we keep of others is nothing but fragments told as wholes, and others do the same with us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And yet this stubborn refusal of the unfinished is not only an intimate dynamic: it is the very way we treat the world. We transfer the same anxiety for wholeness onto the ruins of our history, demanding that every fracture be healed, restored, reabsorbed into a coherent narrative that leaves no room for ambiguity.
<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"
Broken. The Power of the Fragment<\/em>, exhibition views, Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, 2026. Photo Ela Bialkowska, OKNO Studio<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Perhaps that is why, when I learned that Palazzo Strozzi had devoted an entire exhibition to the power of the fragment, I thought the choice was a remarkably brave political gesture, a subversive one. Without much approximation, we could say that the whole of human history is one great attempt to build and rebuild: cities, monuments, societies, history, disciplines. It is natural that this should be so: we are finite human beings, and as such we tend to look for a meaning, a direction, in the things we do or that happen to us. Today more than ever: the technological development that in little more than ten years has given each of us an always-available smartphone, social media and daily access to artificial intelligence has also made us prone to a certain tendency to simplify and trivialize: we polarize on social media, we delegate far too many tasks to AI chatbots, we are always focused on the result. Again: there is no room for the fragment. When we don’t know how to finish a sentence, we ask Gemini. When we aren’t sure how to vote in a referendum, we form an opinion by listening to a few views on social media.
But surely, you will say, there is an abyss between asking Gemini to finish an email and building a political opinion. I wouldn’t be so sure: it is all part of the same process that makes it less and less appealing to inhabit complexity, to fill the fragmented and incomplete spaces, rough and often sharp, that everyday life is made of. And, last but not least, it also points to a certain habit of resolving the unresolved on our own: asking Gemini is not like asking a colleague; watching a video is not like talking it over at the dinner table. It is the temptation to anesthetize friction instead of recognizing it and inhabiting it. We prefer to piece the picture back together alone, without the discomfort of contradiction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is why “Broken: The Power of the Fragment” is a political act. It forces us, literally and physically too, to stand in front of complexity for ten consecutive rooms. It makes us come to terms with the non-linearity of social and historical processes, with their intrinsic violence, the violence that in hindsight we never want to remember as an integral part of human movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In works of art, as in literary works, and in people’s own lives, fragments can arise from many causes. The first and most frequent cause of destruction, and therefore of the making of fragments, is nature. Texts reach us in fragments (the entire history of ancient philosophy, especially Presocratic philosophy, is one vast work of reconstructing and contextualizing fragments), and so do works damaged because they were poorly preserved or exposed to the elements. Many of these are on view in the exhibition, and one stands out: a Greek statue from the 1st century BCE depicting a crouching boy2<\/a><\/sup>, half perfectly preserved, half worn away. The cause is nature: after being caught in a shipwreck, the statue lay half buried in the sand and half exposed to the corrosive action of the sea. This is what Georg Simmel called the charm of the ruin3<\/a><\/sup>: the moment when nature no longer merely destroys the work of human hands but begins to collaborate with it, making it its own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With human beings, in the end, the same thing happens: think of the emphasis with which we try to fix the “last words” we said to a loved one before they left this world, or that they said to us, and of the bitter taste left in the mouth when we realize that last fragment was not as perfect as we would have wished. Again, it is finalism: we project the power of fragments beyond the fragments themselves, in an attempt to rebuild a whole that might give us peace.

<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"
Egyptian Art (from Akhetaten, now Amarna), “Nose and Lips of Akhenaten,” c. 1353\u20131336 BCE, indurated limestone, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Broken. The Power of the Fragment<\/em>, exhibition views, Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, 2026. Photo Ela Bialkowska, OKNO Studio<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

But it is not always nature that produces fragments. There are situations in which fragments are made on purpose, and art bears witness to this too. The fragment chosen as the symbol of the whole exhibition4<\/a><\/sup> is already an example. It is part of the face of a statue depicting the pharaoh Akhenaten, dating back more than three thousand years. The original statue was not destroyed by a shipwreck or some natural disaster, nor was the break a matter of chance: it was a deliberate act. During his reign Akhenaten had abolished polytheism, imposing as the sole cult that of the sun god Aten. After his death, his successors (among them his son Tutankhamun) restored traditional polytheism and set in motion a process of historical condemnation of Akhenaten, demolishing his statues and temples. This is destructive iconoclasm: creating fragments is merely the side effect of a political will to destroy, to condemn to damnatio memoriae<\/em>. And in the end, isn’t that a little like what we do after a bad breakup? Creating fragments of what was, and framing the ones that best serve our narrative?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fragments of love and fragments of politics may resemble each other more than we would ever care to admit, simply because we are human.
Politics, for better or worse, constantly creates fragments, sometimes by choice, sometimes as the side effect of a destruction that, in its intentions, would leave nothing standing (but then, as we know, some small fragment always survives, one way or another). Without going too far back in time, we see something similar to what happened in Egypt three thousand years ago in the bronze bust of Benito Mussolini made by Adolfo Wildt5<\/a><\/sup> in 1923 and later disfigured by partisans during the Liberation. What separates the two sculptures is not the result (destruction): it is the role of power. In the case of Akhenaten, we are facing a destruction imposed by royal power (the new pharaoh), exactly as when the Spanish conquistador Hern\u00e1n Cort\u00e9s, in 1520, ordered his soldiers to deface the Aztec statues of the Templo Mayor in Tenochtitlan (these fragments are also part of the exhibition)6<\/a><\/sup>. The aim is clear: to impose a new system of values, and to show everyone what is held to be wrong and will therefore be punished.
<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"
Adolfo Wildt, “Dux,” 1923, bronze, 95 \u00d7 140 \u00d7 60 cm, Collezione Carlo Eleuteri
Broken. The Power of the Fragment<\/em>, exhibition views, Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, 2026. Photo Ela Bialkowska, OKNO Studio<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

It is no coincidence that in these situations things are often not destroyed but disfigured. The nose, the eyes, the ears (which in Egyptian culture allowed the soul of the deceased to hear, see and breathe), or, in the case of the Aztec goddess Chalchiuhtlicue, the arms as well as the face. In many ways, disfiguring is even worse than destroying: it means keeping the symbol recognizable, but offending it. Go ahead and look at it: it has been rendered harmless anyway. In “Discipline and Punish”7<\/a><\/sup> the philosopher Michel Foucault describes the disfigured body as a theater of power. Punishing (disfiguring) a symbol has a social function; there is a precise strategy in the exercise of that specific kind of power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The same cannot be said of the Mussolini bust, whose defacement does not follow a vertical logic of power (the pharaoh who gives the order, Cort\u00e9s who gives the order), but is the social, horizontal and visceral response of a community reclaiming public space and overturning the tyrant’s simulacrum. It is iconoclasm from below: the pickaxe blow that does not erase history but opens a new chapter of it, precisely by carving the wound into the metal.
<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"
Mexica Art (Aztec) (from Tenochtitlan, now Mexico City), “Statue of Chalchiuhtlicue,” c. 1325\u20131521, diorite, Mexico City, Museo Nacional de Antropolog\u00eda
Broken. The Power of the Fragment<\/em>, exhibition views, Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, 2026. Photo Ela Bialkowska, OKNO Studio
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Whether it is the sea corroding marble, a royal decree erasing a face, or a crowd in uproar mutilating a bust, the fragment disarms us because it refuses the illusion of wholeness. It reminds us that every certainty we hold (about love, politics, memory) is never a monolithic block, but a precarious composition of shards that we have painstakingly put back together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a novel that portrays a post-apocalyptic world wrecked by the whims of Big Tech, Naomi Alderman’s wise pen imagines that shortly before the beginning of the end (the apocalypse), a group of people decided to come together under the guidance of Enoch, a charismatic leader, in a peculiar religion that seeks to restore the whole, rejecting shards and fragments, convinced that the world was made to be whole and that it is we who keep dividing and subdividing it8<\/a><\/sup>, and that nothing good has ever come from excessive subdivision: after all, we even went so far as to split the atom, and nothing but destruction came of it9<\/a><\/sup>. And yet perhaps that is not so. Martha, Alderman’s protagonist, at one of the moments of highest narrative tension, finding her life in danger, discovers she is completely absorbed by a detail: the painted nails of a woman, just as desperate, in front of her. A woman who, in utter despair, looking at her own red nails, finds relief and reassurance in the shards of color she has applied to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Martha watches her study one nail at a time, comparing the first with the second and the second with the fourth, completely absorbed by those tiny shattered flakes of color. And suddenly she understands. Fragments, pieces: they are all these people have left. Nothing is whole for them, and yet those shards of color are enough. It is something Enoch never taught her: that in a broken world pieces can offer comfort enough.10<\/a><\/sup><\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

And this, I believe, sums up why we so desperately need to put the power of the fragment back at the center, to start again from fragments in order to build anew, from scratch and over again, every time it is needed, and to find comfort in giving the fragment new meaning in a broken world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n

Esmeralda Moretti<\/strong> is a philosophy communicator and content creator specializing in applied ethics. With a degree in philosophy, she uses contemporary digital media to encourage critical thinking and ethical debate, making philosophical reflection a lively, accessible space for ongoing dialogue and exchange.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n
  1. See Roland Barthes, “A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments,” trans. Richard Howard, Hill and Wang, New York 1978 (orig. “Fragments d’un discours amoureux,” \u00c9ditions du Seuil, Paris 1977, p. 187). \u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li>
  2. Greek Art (Antikythera), “Crouching Boy,” early 1st century BCE, Parian marble, Athens, National Archaeological Museum, inv. HNAM 2773. \u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li>
  3. Georg Simmel, “Die Ruine” (1911); English translation “The Ruin,” in Kurt H. Wolff (ed.), “Georg Simmel, 1858\u20131918,” Ohio State University Press, Columbus 1959. \u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li>
  4. Egyptian Art (from Akhetaten, now Amarna), “Nose and Lips of Akhenaten,” c. 1353\u20131336 BCE, indurated limestone, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art (26.7.1395). \u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li>
  5. Adolfo Wildt, “Dux,” 1923, bronze, 95 \u00d7 140 \u00d7 60 cm, Collezione Carlo Eleuteri. \u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li>
  6. Mexica Art (Aztec) (from Tenochtitlan, now Mexico City), “Statue of Chalchiuhtlicue,” c. 1325\u20131521, diorite, Mexico City, Museo Nacional de Antropolog\u00eda, 10-82215. \u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li>
  7. Michel Foucault, “Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison,” trans. Alan Sheridan, Pantheon Books, New York 1977 (orig. “Surveiller et punir. Naissance de la prison,” Gallimard, Paris 1975). \u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li>
  8. See Naomi Alderman, “The Future,” Fig Tree, London 2023 (It. trans. “Il futuro,” trans. Francesca Pe’, Feltrinelli, Milan 2025, pp. 137 ff.). \u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li>
  9. \u00a0Ibid. \u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li>
  10. \u00a0Ibid. \u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n
    <\/div>\n\n\n\n

    Cover: Greek Art (Antikythera), “Crouching Boy,” early 1st century BCE, Parian marble, Athens, National Archaeological Museum. Broken. The Power of the Fragment<\/em>, exhibition views, Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, 2026. Photo Ela Bialkowska, OKNO Studio<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    When Roland Barthes published “A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments” in 1977, he made a seemingly senseless gesture: rather than telling a love story from beginning to end, he chose to catalog it in alphabetical order, in splinters, entries and exclamations. In fact, the sense Barthes chose is the only one truly capable of capturing the reality […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":26290,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"mc4wp_mailchimp_campaign":[],"footnotes":"[{\"content\":\"See Roland Barthes, \\\"A Lover's Discourse: Fragments,\\\" trans. Richard Howard, Hill and Wang, New York 1978 (orig. \\\"Fragments d'un discours amoureux,\\\" \u00c9ditions du Seuil, Paris 1977, p. 187).\",\"id\":\"dc9770ff-6e1f-416b-aee4-28f369f85f2b\"},{\"content\":\"Greek Art (Antikythera), \\\"Crouching Boy,\\\" early 1st century BCE, Parian marble, Athens, National Archaeological Museum, inv. HNAM 2773.\",\"id\":\"2b26f40f-9d94-4275-a9cf-6c4e65c00145\"},{\"content\":\"Georg Simmel, \\\"Die Ruine\\\" (1911); English translation \\\"The Ruin,\\\" in Kurt H. Wolff (ed.), \\\"Georg Simmel, 1858\u20131918,\\\" Ohio State University Press, Columbus 1959.\",\"id\":\"9dbbcb2e-4e4d-46ea-bce0-fc45beb87918\"},{\"content\":\"Egyptian Art (from Akhetaten, now Amarna), \\\"Nose and Lips of Akhenaten,\\\" c. 1353\u20131336 BCE, indurated limestone, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art (26.7.1395).\",\"id\":\"8982fc53-50a6-4f0b-9f41-fce407e9485e\"},{\"content\":\"Adolfo Wildt, \\\"Dux,\\\" 1923, bronze, 95 \u00d7 140 \u00d7 60 cm, Collezione Carlo Eleuteri.\",\"id\":\"ecf90655-db07-4ada-9df7-e136e483027b\"},{\"content\":\"Mexica Art (Aztec) (from Tenochtitlan, now Mexico City), \\\"Statue of Chalchiuhtlicue,\\\" c. 1325\u20131521, diorite, Mexico City, Museo Nacional de Antropolog\u00eda, 10-82215.\",\"id\":\"62a214e4-fcfd-49df-ada9-3233acf69f74\"},{\"content\":\"Michel Foucault, \\\"Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison,\\\" trans. Alan Sheridan, Pantheon Books, New York 1977 (orig. \\\"Surveiller et punir. Naissance de la prison,\\\" Gallimard, Paris 1975).\",\"id\":\"fe376854-de67-46f6-bd92-349c2d1d9ed0\"},{\"content\":\"See Naomi Alderman, \\\"The Future,\\\" Fig Tree, London 2023 (It. trans. \\\"Il futuro,\\\" trans. Francesca Pe', Feltrinelli, Milan 2025, pp. 137 ff.).\",\"id\":\"cfb83959-31fd-474b-a24f-7c195f9ea14e\"},{\"content\":\"\u00a0Ibid.\",\"id\":\"e363872f-f9bd-4569-bc73-e0be738e5b81\"},{\"content\":\"\u00a0Ibid.\",\"id\":\"267f4df8-65a6-4141-9388-ac1ede1a1b15\"}]"},"categories":[1],"tags":[73,72],"class_list":["post-26291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-senza-categoria","tag-broken-il-potere-del-frammento","tag-broken-the-power-of-the-fragment"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nFacing the Fragment – Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.palazzostrozzi.org\/en\/facing-the-fragment\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Facing the Fragment – Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"When Roland Barthes published “A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments” in 1977, he made a seemingly senseless gesture: rather than telling a love story from beginning to end, he chose to catalog it in alphabetical order, in splinters, entries and exclamations. In fact, the sense Barthes chose is the only one truly capable of capturing the reality […]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.palazzostrozzi.org\/en\/facing-the-fragment\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-10-23T14:04:41+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2026-10-23T14:53:33+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.palazzostrozzi.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Arte-greca_Ragazzo-accovacciato_inizi-I-secolo-a.C.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1600\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"960\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"social\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.palazzostrozzi.org\/en\/facing-the-fragment\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.palazzostrozzi.org\/en\/facing-the-fragment\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"social\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.palazzostrozzi.org\/en\/#\/schema\/person\/2ca16977c921f4f2316d06b87ab6f860\"},\"headline\":\"Facing the Fragment\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-10-23T14:04:41+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2026-10-23T14:53:33+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.palazzostrozzi.org\/en\/facing-the-fragment\/\"},\"wordCount\":2070,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.palazzostrozzi.org\/en\/facing-the-fragment\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.palazzostrozzi.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Arte-greca_Ragazzo-accovacciato_inizi-I-secolo-a.C.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Broken. Il potere del frammento\",\"Broken. The Power of the Fragment\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Senza categoria\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.palazzostrozzi.org\/en\/facing-the-fragment\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.palazzostrozzi.org\/en\/facing-the-fragment\/\",\"name\":\"Facing the Fragment – Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.palazzostrozzi.org\/en\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.palazzostrozzi.org\/en\/facing-the-fragment\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.palazzostrozzi.org\/en\/facing-the-fragment\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.palazzostrozzi.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Arte-greca_Ragazzo-accovacciato_inizi-I-secolo-a.C.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-10-23T14:04:41+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2026-10-23T14:53:33+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.palazzostrozzi.org\/en\/#\/schema\/person\/2ca16977c921f4f2316d06b87ab6f860\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.palazzostrozzi.org\/en\/facing-the-fragment\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.palazzostrozzi.org\/en\/facing-the-fragment\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.palazzostrozzi.org\/en\/facing-the-fragment\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.palazzostrozzi.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Arte-greca_Ragazzo-accovacciato_inizi-I-secolo-a.C.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.palazzostrozzi.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Arte-greca_Ragazzo-accovacciato_inizi-I-secolo-a.C.jpg\",\"width\":1600,\"height\":960},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.palazzostrozzi.org\/en\/facing-the-fragment\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.palazzostrozzi.org\/en\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Facing the Fragment\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.palazzostrozzi.org\/en\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.palazzostrozzi.org\/en\/\",\"name\":\"Palazzo Strozzi\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.palazzostrozzi.org\/en\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.palazzostrozzi.org\/en\/#\/schema\/person\/2ca16977c921f4f2316d06b87ab6f860\",\"name\":\"social\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Facing the Fragment – Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.palazzostrozzi.org\/en\/facing-the-fragment\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Facing the Fragment – Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi","og_description":"When Roland Barthes published “A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments” in 1977, he made a seemingly senseless gesture: rather than telling a love story from beginning to end, he chose to catalog it in alphabetical order, in splinters, entries and exclamations. In fact, the sense Barthes chose is the only one truly capable of capturing the reality […]","og_url":"https:\/\/www.palazzostrozzi.org\/en\/facing-the-fragment\/","og_site_name":"Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi","article_published_time":"2026-10-23T14:04:41+00:00","article_modified_time":"2026-10-23T14:53:33+00:00","og_image":[{"width":1600,"height":960,"url":"https:\/\/www.palazzostrozzi.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Arte-greca_Ragazzo-accovacciato_inizi-I-secolo-a.C.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"social","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.palazzostrozzi.org\/en\/facing-the-fragment\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.palazzostrozzi.org\/en\/facing-the-fragment\/"},"author":{"name":"social","@id":"https:\/\/www.palazzostrozzi.org\/en\/#\/schema\/person\/2ca16977c921f4f2316d06b87ab6f860"},"headline":"Facing the Fragment","datePublished":"2026-10-23T14:04:41+00:00","dateModified":"2026-10-23T14:53:33+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.palazzostrozzi.org\/en\/facing-the-fragment\/"},"wordCount":2070,"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.palazzostrozzi.org\/en\/facing-the-fragment\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.palazzostrozzi.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Arte-greca_Ragazzo-accovacciato_inizi-I-secolo-a.C.jpg","keywords":["Broken. Il potere del frammento","Broken. The Power of the Fragment"],"articleSection":["Senza categoria"],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.palazzostrozzi.org\/en\/facing-the-fragment\/","url":"https:\/\/www.palazzostrozzi.org\/en\/facing-the-fragment\/","name":"Facing the Fragment – Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.palazzostrozzi.org\/en\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.palazzostrozzi.org\/en\/facing-the-fragment\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.palazzostrozzi.org\/en\/facing-the-fragment\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.palazzostrozzi.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Arte-greca_Ragazzo-accovacciato_inizi-I-secolo-a.C.jpg","datePublished":"2026-10-23T14:04:41+00:00","dateModified":"2026-10-23T14:53:33+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.palazzostrozzi.org\/en\/#\/schema\/person\/2ca16977c921f4f2316d06b87ab6f860"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.palazzostrozzi.org\/en\/facing-the-fragment\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.palazzostrozzi.org\/en\/facing-the-fragment\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.palazzostrozzi.org\/en\/facing-the-fragment\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.palazzostrozzi.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Arte-greca_Ragazzo-accovacciato_inizi-I-secolo-a.C.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.palazzostrozzi.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Arte-greca_Ragazzo-accovacciato_inizi-I-secolo-a.C.jpg","width":1600,"height":960},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.palazzostrozzi.org\/en\/facing-the-fragment\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.palazzostrozzi.org\/en\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Facing the Fragment"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.palazzostrozzi.org\/en\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.palazzostrozzi.org\/en\/","name":"Palazzo Strozzi","description":"","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.palazzostrozzi.org\/en\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.palazzostrozzi.org\/en\/#\/schema\/person\/2ca16977c921f4f2316d06b87ab6f860","name":"social"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.palazzostrozzi.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.palazzostrozzi.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.palazzostrozzi.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.palazzostrozzi.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.palazzostrozzi.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26291"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.palazzostrozzi.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26291\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26315,"href":"https:\/\/www.palazzostrozzi.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26291\/revisions\/26315"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.palazzostrozzi.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.palazzostrozzi.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.palazzostrozzi.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.palazzostrozzi.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}