misjuncture

English

Etymology

mis- +‎ juncture

Noun

misjuncture (plural misjunctures)

1. A poorly articulated connection, a joining of things that functions poorly.
   • 2003, Rena Lederman, “Review of Steel to Stone: A Chronicle of Colonialism in the Southern Highlands of Papua New Guinea by Jeffrey CLARK; Chris Ballard; Michael Nihill”, in The Journal of the Polynesian Society‎^[1], 112(1): 78-80:

     The practical understandings implied in these accounts constitute what Clark (following Sahlins up to a point) calls a structure of "misjuncture" (p.70).

   • 2012, Ranjan Ghosh, “Reading and Experiencing a Play Transculturally”, in Comparative Drama, 46(3): 259-281:

     This "unpeace," at once the site of conjuncture and misjuncture, vitalizes our reading and viewing.

   • 2015, Anna Kornbluh, “The Realist Blueprint”, in The Henry James Review‎^[2], 36(3): 199-211:

     The tension between the déclassé block and the particularized solids that it houses, as well as the secondary tension of junctures and misjunctures between the voids and divergent solids, activates a zone of contradictions precariously cantilevered into a delimitable whole

   • 2019, David Tomas, Transcultural Space And Transcultural Beings‎^[3], Routledge:

     Conversely, in the case of Papua New Guinea, Edward Schieffelin et al. argued that encounters were more often than not characterized by "a structure of misjuncture" (1991:285) as opposed to a "structure of conjuncture," inasmuch as different groups of peoples reacted in different ways to the Strickland-Purari and earlier or later exploratory patrols that passed through their territories, according to historical contingency and the orientations of their own particular cosmologies, rituals, and so on (1991:283-290).

Related terms

• disjuncture