Roland Breeur: Lies—Imposture—Stupidity

Abstract

Whenever we think of impostors, we tend to think of liars. Yet impostures cannot be phenomenologically reduced to lies. Every lie presupposes a distinction between true and false, and it operates through a negation of reality, presenting falsity as truth and vice versa. An imposture, on the other hand, seeks to erase the distinction between true and false altogether. An impostor constructs a fiction that aims at substituting reality. In this process, an entire network of lies is put to work in order to attain the ontological status of the real. This results in a dynamic that deprives truths of their authority, while making untruths highly potent in terms of their capacity to produce effects.