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ment of replicas (Eco 1976:178ff). There are (i) signs whose tokens can be indefinitely produced according to their type (books or musical scores), (ii) signs whose tokens, even though produced according to a type, possess a certain quality of material uniqueness (two flags of the same nation can be distinguished on the grounds of their glorious age), and (iii) signs whose token is their type (like autographic works of visual arts). From this point of view we are obliged to draw a straightforward distinction among different types of forgery. Let us mainly consider Downright Forgery and Forgery Ex-Nihilo (it will be evident in which sense Moderate Forgery stands in between). |
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Downright Forgeries affect only signs (ii) and (iii). It is impossible to produce a fake Hamlet unless by making a different tragedy or by editing a detectable censored version of it. It is possible to produce a forgery of its First Folio edition because in this case what is forged is not the work of Shakespeare but that of the original printer. Downright Forgeries are not signs: they are only expressions which look like other expressionsand they can become signs only if we take them as facsimiles. |
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On the contrary, it seems that phenomena of Forgery Ex-Nihilo are more semiosically complicated. It is certainly possible to claim that a statue Ob is discernibly the same as the legendary statue Oa by a great Greek artist (same stone, same shape, same original connection with the hands of its author); but it is also possible to attribute a written document Ob to an author A without paying attention to its expression substance. Before Aquinas, a Latin text, known to be translated from an Arab version, De Causis, was attributed to Aristotle. Nobody falsely identified either a given parchment or a given specimen of handwriting (because it was known that the alleged original object was in Greek). It was the content that was (erroneously) thought to be Aristotelian. |
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In such cases, Ob was first seen as a sign of something in order to recognize this something as absolutely interchangeable with Oa (in the sense examined above, section 4.2.2). In Downright Forgery (and in the case of autographic arts), the Claimant makes a claim about the authenticity, genuineness, or originality of the expression. In Forgeries Ex-Nihilo (which concern both autographic and allographic arts) the Claimant's claim can concern either the expression or the content. |
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In Downright Forgeries, the Claimantby virtue of a perceptual misunderstanding concerning two expression substancesbelieves that Ob is the same as the allegedly authentic Oa. In the second case, the Claimantin order to identify Ob with the legendary Oamust first of all believe (and prove) that Ob is authentic (if it is an instance of |
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