LIPOPROBLEMS: DEVELOPING A STRATEGY OMITTING A KEY PROBLEM

COMMENTARY ARCHIVES, 7 Sep 2009

Anthony Judge

The Systemic Challenge of Climate Change and Resource Issues

Introduction

According to Wikipedia, a lipogram (from Greek lipogrammatos or lipagrammatos, "missing letter") is a form of constrained writing or word game consisting of writing texts in which a common letter or group of letters is omitted — usually a common vowel. The challenge is trivial for uncommon letters; the greatest challenge in English is omitting the letter "e", especially when the text is grammatically correct and smooth-flowing.

This approach is one initiative of Oulipo (French abbreviation for: Ouvroir de littérature potentielle; roughly translated: "workshop of potential literature"), group of writers, poets and mathematicians interested in the creation of literature using constrained writing techniques (see Harry Mathews and Alastair Brotchie, The Oulipo Compendium, 1998/2005 — contents). One purpose of such constraints is to triggering new ideas and new thinking. The group is associated with several others having similar objectives with regard to other forms of representation.

The lipogram constitutes an interesting metaphor for the challenge of articulating a strategy in response to a complex of problems (a problematique) whilst omitting a single problem — where problems might be understood as the "letters" of the strategic alphabet. Clearly the challenge is relatively trivial in the case of uncommon problems in any problematique.

It would then be appropriate to speak of such a constrained strategy as a lipoproblem (from Greek lipoproblema, "missing problem", where problem may also be understood as "question").

CONTINUE READING IN THE  ORIGINAL – LAETUS IN PRAESENS

This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 7 Sep 2009.

Anticopyright: Editorials and articles originated on TMS may be freely reprinted, disseminated, translated and used as background material, provided an acknowledgement and link to the source, TMS: LIPOPROBLEMS: DEVELOPING A STRATEGY OMITTING A KEY PROBLEM, is included. Thank you.

If you enjoyed this article, please donate to TMS to join the growing list of TMS Supporters.

Share this article: email mastodon facebook 🔗 copy link

This work is licensed under a CC BY-NC 4.0 License.

Comments are closed.