Week 7 - Valentino's Fragmentation

I’ll be looking at What is the What? through the public sphere concept of Fragmentation. Fragmentation describes the different groups or niche public spheres “addressing issues that are supposed to be of interest to them” (McKee, 140). This allows many voices and opinions to be heard from a variety of races, genders, sexes, and religions. This will be an interesting way to look at What is the What? because Valentino participates in his own fragmented public sphere which allows his struggle of Sudanese civil war and the lost boys enter the public sphere. This is important because if the public sphere weren’t so fragmented, this matter would probably go ignored. The key to fragmentation is an emphasis on diversity that the particular culture’s issues to become known. In doing so, Eggers establishes the intercultural relationships linguistically to show the fragmentation of Valentino’s Sudanese lost boy identity. In one scene, Valentino detaches himself from African Americans through addressing the teens with deictic pronouns of distance. Valentino summarizes the teens’ hostility: “…he thought I was responsible for the enslaving of his ancestors” (Eggers, 19-20). The pronoun, his, illustrates that Valentino’s Sudanese identity is not related to African American identity. If he included the pronoun, our, he would have affiliated himself with African Americans. By illustrating how the two ethnic identities are separate, Eggers shows that they are fragmented; they have distinct struggles and stories. This is important to stress fragmentation because it brings both their struggles into the public sphere instead of lumping them together or simply ignoring them.