What work(s) of philosophy does your piece take as its primary source(s)?
Adorno, Theodor. Minima Moralia; Leopardi, Giacomo. Zibaldone.

Please tell us about your piece.
This hypertext initiates a reading of Giacomo Leopardi’s philosophical reflections on the dialectical method in his Zibaldone of Thoughts, and in particular on the impasse of its instrumental practice, through Adorno’s essay “Keeping one’s distance” (Minima Moralia). In its brevity and conceptual density, Adorno’s text offers an interpretive key to Leopardi’s copious collection of dispersed reflections, while the latter brings contextual richness to the former. Both authors critique, on the one hand, the mastering positivist validation of phenomena and, on the other, the cautious relativist renunciation of definitions, while emphasizing the dynamic process of thought as it stretches, fumbles and recuperates its movement amidst the fundamental groundlessness of our epistemic condition. Leopardi describes the same pattern of the impasse of instrumental intentionality in the pursuit of knowledge in various contexts, such as reading comprehension, philosophical reflection, scientific method, poetic composition, foreign language acquisition. He grapples with keeping the distance that denotes the inviolable nature of phenomena in the process of honing, overshooting, relaxing, and releasing the intention/care to understand. His main challenge in practicing the dialectical method of interpretation is the task of circumscribing the relational networks of observed phenomena in a way that does not reductively curtail their agency or surrender the task of system-building—a challenge of definition that is reflected in the textuality of his collection of thoughts at the level of syntax and formal organization. Likewise, the reader’s task of correlating the many contexts of Leopardi’s thought where binary oppositions converge into dialectical movement has to grapple with the fragmentary nature of his philosophical reflections and with his indications for their relatedness in the form of cross-references and thematic indexes which create a virtual hypertext.
My choice of hypertext as a medium of interpretation therefore attempts to reflect the relational and dynamic form of Leopardi’s stylistic expression. At this stage my hypertext mainly employs graphesis and some interactive movement to read Adorno’s text and to establish a few parameters and contexts for Leopardi’s dialectical method, such as the inexhaustibly relational nature of phenomena and the role of imagery in the cognitive process. I also used the hypertext medium as an instrument to support my process of clarifying ideas and formulating interpretation. I have been exploring options for representing the dialectical method embedded in the textuality of Leopardi’s collection of fragments in a Digital Humanities project (www.digitalzibaldone.net) which is focused on developing a digital edition of the text and facilitating the articulation of the thematic networks of relations between the fragments based on Leopardi’s editorial annotations. I think that the expressive and interactive capabilities of hypertext and the computational and visualization methods for articulating semantic networks could lend support to the methodological role of the fragment in Leopardi’s thought as well as of other thinkers of modernity who engage in the theory and practice of this textual genre.

What other sources have you used in your piece?
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WBS6AZmT-RTtuniCKGahvikWUlRJvG9HSSQqiq-NK1w/edit?usp=sharing