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Grid and Swerve

This essay argues for a particular motion, “clinamen” or swerve, as the animating force of renewed democratic social space. The argument proceeds historically and conceptually, first by recounting the “gridding” of the western expanse in the antebellum era; second, by tracing Margaret Fuller's unique mode of travel throughout this expanse in 1843. Drawing on the late work of Louis Althusser, I conclude by extrapolating from Fuller's travels an “aleatory style,” conceptualized around the transformative power of clinamen. The semiotic renewal of democratic social space, I argue, emerges through the splendor and surprise of the swerve.