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4. He (Queneau) has learned all this from the discoverer of Hitler's diaries. |
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All the individuals involved in this story are by now dead. The only object we have at our disposal is that hanging in the MOMA. |
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It is evident that none of the philological criteria listed in 6 can help us in ascertaining the truth. Even though it is possible that a perfect connoisseur can distinguish some imponderable differences between the hand of Dali and the hand of Picasso, or between the two hands of Picasso in different historical periods, any assertion of this kind could be challenged by other experts. |
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Such a story is not so paradoxical as it might seem. We are still wondering whether the author of the Iliad was the same as the author of the Odyssey, whether one of them (at least) was Homer, and whether Homer was a single person. |
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The current notion of fake presupposes a "true" original with which the fake should be compared. But we have seen that every criterion for ascertaining whether something is the fake of an original coincides with the criteria for ascertaining whether the original is authentic. Thus the original cannot be used as a parameter for unmasking its forgeries unless we blindly take for granted that what is presented to us as the original is unchallengeably so (but this would contrast with any philological criterion). |
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Proofs through material support tell us that a document is a fake if its material support does not date back to the time of its alleged origin. Such a test can clearly prove that a canvas produced by a mechanical loom cannot have been painted during the sixteenth century, but it cannot prove that a canvas produced in the sixteenth century and covered with colors chemically similar to those produced at that time was really painted during the sixteenth century. |
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Proofs through Linear Text Manifestation tell us that a text is fake if its Linear Text Manifestation does not conform to the normative rules of writing, painting, sculpting, and so on, holding at the moment of its alleged production. But the fact that a text meets all those requirements does not prove that the text is original (this proves at most that the forgerer was very skilled). |
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Proofs through content tell us that a text is a fake if its conceptual categories, taxonomies, modes of argumentation, iconological schemes, and so on, are not coherent with the semantic structure (the form of the content) of the cultural milieu of the alleged author. But |
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