This monograph is an interdisciplinary study of the concept of ‘fragment’ in literature and in critical and literary theory. It discusses the fragment’s performativity and function within a historical perspective, stretching from Heraclitus, via the German Romantics and European writers of the Modernist period, to American postmodern manifestations of the fragment. This is the first history of the fragment to appear in English, and it is also the first attempt at producing a consistent taxonomy of literary and critical fragments. The fragments are categorised according to function, not author intention, and the study addresses a number of questions: What constitutes the fragment, when the fragment can only be defined a posteriori? Does the fragment begin on its own, or is it begun by others, writers and critics? Does it acquire a name of its own, or is it labelled by others? All these questions revolve around issues of agency, and they are best discussed in terms of performativity, which means seeing fragments as acts: acts of literature, acts of reading, acts of writing. The book demonstrates how a poetics of the fragment as a performative genre can be created, situating the fragment both as literature and as a phenomenon within postmodern criticism against the background of philosophy, art history, and theology.

The Fragment: Towards a History and Poetics of a Performative Genre (Europäische Hochschulschriften / European University Studies / Publications Universitaires Européennes)

Literature & Fiction

Elias, Camelia

History & Criticism

Peter Lang AG, Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften

This is a book of fragments and prose poetry celebrating what mothers try to pass on to their children: a sense of how to be grateful for the experiences in life that can be said to be not only beautiful but also significant in form. The author's own mother, a logician, emerges as a powerful woman who has things to say to people she encounters through mediation: mathematicians, prophets, lovers, and fools. The introduction to the collection is an informative memoir which entangles the personal essay with the formal properties of writing that can be said to be both epistemic, creating a certain kind of knowledge, and also creative in terms of approaches to narrative.

The Logician

Poetry

EyeCorner Press

The Way of the Sign is a book about extraction, about reducing methods of inquiry to the bare bones. In a clear, concise, and dialogic style, Camelia Elias guides students through 10 schools of theory and criticism. The focus is on 'asking' each theory to give its best in the simplest way, by making us see what is at stake and how we might respond to it.

The Way of The Sign: Cultural Text Theory in Two Steps

Baka Tarot is a calligraphic tarot that pays homage to martial arts, Zen masters, and the powerful energy of black ink to come through in any rendition, from the hand to the digital processing of the marks left on paper. In this book Camelia Elias describes her cards, offering also short readings of 3-card strings for each individual representation. 
Baka Tarot consists of 26 cards: 22 are named after the standard tarot trumps and 4 are named after poker actions: Call, Check, Raise, and Fold. The aim of this combination is to suggest that what we do with the cards and the way we create them is forever subject to chance. If this wasn't the case, we wouldn't be able to appreciate the ludic in life. 'Baka, ' the Japanese word for Fool, participates in this game as a nod to the calligraphic tradition. 
Note: The cards are not included with this book. They can be purchased from the author.

Baka Tarot: The Fool's Calligraphic Journey

Comics & Graphic Novels

How To Create Comics & Manga

This book depicts manifestations of folk magic, black magic, and practical magic as courage and everyday wisdom, and it demonstrates how reading cards can entice us to concrete magical action. It thus goes beyond reading cards for personal and spiritual growth and demonstrates how the cards create connections between people, from the living to the dead. It talks about objects magically landing in your kitchen, family secrets that get untangled in necromantic sessions, power and how we use it. At the heart of the book is a guide to storytelling and spellcrafting with cards, demonstrating the transformative power of stories that makes us skillful in the arts of asking, knowing, and having. Fully color illustrated with the unique and rarely seen Marseille cards of Carolus Zoya (ca. 1790), and accompanied also by the author's original art, the book is a delight to the eye.

The Oracle Travels Light: Principles of Magic with Cards (Divination)

Religion & Spirituality

New Age & Spirituality

How many times have you sat with the images of the Tarot, especially the trump cards, and had the feeling that although you see what you see, you also see more? I bet your answer to this is, ‘many.’ 
This book explores the subtlety of the tarot trumps and how its power translates into a concrete experience that can only be summed up like this: ‘I’m reading the Tarot, and it feels like riding the hedge.’ 
At the heart of the book is a simple method in the form of an invitation: Think in a way that bursts open your perception. Don’t think in terms of received perception. 
When the Tarot speaks to you, it doesn’t speak in a language that’s borrowed. It speaks in a language that you understand, as you cross the horizon line, where the seen and the unseen mingle in an oracular, and poetic way.

THE POWER OF THE TRUMPS: A SUBTLE BURST

Buddhism

The Power of the Pips: Courting Numbers in Cartomancy introduces the reader to the following method of reading the pip cards of the Marseille Tarot cards:  Think about the essential properties that form the four suits in a pack of cards. Don’t think ‘meaning’.  As symbolic meaning is presented as situational, all the examples discussed highlight the importance of reading the cards in context, rather than seeing them as carriers of inherent signification. The style follows the same tone as in the companion book: The Power of the Trumps: A Subtle Burst, whose premise is to deconstruct set cartomantic clichés. CONTENTS SMALL SEDUCTIONS / 9 A SHORT THEORY OF THE PIP CARDS / 15 A SHORT THEORY OF THE COURT CARDS / 27 WISHING WELL / 53 HUMOR ME / 59 BELIEVABLE STORIES / 65 WAIT FOR IT / 79 THE DECISIVE FACTOR / 89 BURNING BRIDGES / 101 FREE WILL / 105

THE POWER OF THE PIPS: COURTING NUMBERS IN CARTOMANCY

This book aims to cover four basic questions: Why do we read cards? What's so special about the Marseille Tarot? How can the cards uncover our blind spots? What does it mean to live a magical life, when we allow the stories that the cards tell us to offer solutions to our real problems? The book is also the first to introduce the readers to the wonderful and strange cards of Carolus Zoya, a most rare and unseen Tarot de Marseille deck made in Turin at the end of 1700.

Marseille Tarot: Towards the Art of Reading (Divination)

Humor & Entertainment

Puzzles & Games

This book is for all the diviners who want to hear what else we can do with the Tarot cards other than what a particular school or tradition prescribes. It’s a treat à la carte for all the diviners who ever felt burnt out, after having served the same dish over and over to people. There’s only so many times you can excitedly deliver messages à la ‘the Empress means nurturing’ and ‘the Emperor means stability.’ How about the countless other situations when that is not the case, when the standard meaning is not applicable?
This is a book that deconstructs everything you know about the most powerful cards in the Tarot pack, the trumps. Although my example is the trumps of the Marseille Tarot, the book can be used as an inspiration in work with any other Tarot deck.
The book introduces the reader to the fundamentals of reading a visual text, offering as well descriptions of the Tarot trumps according to the question, followed by a sustained analysis of how each trump card can be read in contexts of common concern.
The nerve of the book is anchored in a rigorous Zen perspective, the method of reading like the Devil, and martial arts cartomancy, all primary ingredients in this chef’s authorial voice and original concoction. The numerous examples of card readings and personal stories are also flavoured by hints of magic, curses, and merciless non-spirituality.

What is not: Marseille Tarot à la carte (Divination)

This short history of divination with cards looks at three main traditions: the French, the British, and the Anglo-American gone 'French'. The style is succinct and personal, with the writing performing on two levels: the descriptive in a historical context and the reflective in a contemplative context. In between, the author offers an original take on how we can think about the history of divination.

Divination with Cards: A Short History

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Books by Elias, Camelia