The Serial as Episteme

Abstract

In the epilogue to Serial Forms, Clare Pettitt identifies key elements of the “form” she investigates in her massively detailed, deeply original study: The serial is both form and process, and, to stay true to its form, it has to continue. Escaping form just as it is formed, the serial “begins again to begin.” . . . [S]eriality appears in different but related guises: it can be a form; a genre; a system; a technology; and it can also be a strategy; a philosophy; a mode. But wherever it appears, a distinct interrelation of its parts and a recognizable forward movement mark it as serial. Seriality was the single most important “form” to emerge out of the eighteenth century and into the nineteenth. (293)