This was a poetic technique bandied about in the halls of the Creative Writing Department at Iowa in the late 1960s. And it means precisely what you have described--juxtaposing unconnected objects (things, observations, states of mind) for the sake of creating random and unique associations in the readers'/hearers' minds.
I'm trying to think of an example, but I guess that the published poets who used this technique are...forgettable? (Or I'm just getting old.)
In any case, i think that this notion of "discontinuity" being used as a deliberate literary device may have had an UNCONSCIOUS source, as a REACTION TO the ravaging of our minds by TV commercials--i.e., an attempt to make the ravaging conscious, and/or conquer it. Poets and artists do do this--or try to: respond to the deepest currents or problems in society by REPRESENTING those currents or problems in unusual ways.
I also think--and have thought for some time--that the interruption of stories on commercial TV, by unrelated (not to mention, loud, obnoxious, repetitive) commercials, is one of the most serious cultural problems of our era, for it renders an entire population unable to follow a story line from beginning to end. It FRACTURES consciousness and is extremely destructive of the most basic formation of the human personality: the ability to follow YOUR OWN inner story of who you are, and the consequent ability to follow and empathize with other peoples' stories. Commercial TV is supremely alienating.
The ability to tell a story well is a gift. But the ability to FOLLOW a story--to identify with it, to enjoy it, to feel emotions about it, to learn from it--IS the human heritage, or, at the least, a very important component of ALL human life, in every society, and from the beginning of...ahem...the human tale. We ARE the stories we hear, read or see. And if our stories are broken into fragments and slaughtered by obnoxious intrusions--intrusions that insist that the only value is MONEY (the money to buy the things being sold)--and we are chronically denied the satisfaction of following good stories--this has a profoundly negative impact on us, that can be seen in every sphere of life, from our inability to remember the Iraq War and the crimes of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, to our ability to drive to work without "road rage" (remembering that other drivers are HUMAN BEINGS). Ever wonder WHO that alien is, driving your car, spouting expletives and feeling spurts of rage? That "alien" is YOU--an unrecognizable you whose mind has been fragmented by commercial TV.
We NEED stories. We ARE stories. And when our stories are systematically, universally--in every home--shattered, blown apart, fragmented, destroyed--we become ALIENS, to ourselves and to others.
You describe this very well, indeed, in your reply, above. What a brilliant piece of writing, and profound insight!
What is it when the media bombards us with multiple, conflicting states of mind and we have no time to mentally or emotionally process one before we are hit with another.
Those old '60s poets were onto something. But "discontinuity" is a rather cold word. Perhaps "profound discontinuity"? Meaning, the rips and tears in our psyches inflicted by commercial TV, which, on the one hand, present us with good stories (often enough) and, on the other, rip the 'book' out of our hands and force us to watch obscene dances about MONEY.
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