by Corry Shores
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[Roland Breeur, entry directory]
[Breeur, Lies – Imposture – Stupidity, entry directory]
[The following is a paragraph by paragraph summary of Breeur’s text. Boldface, underlining, and bracketed commentary are my own. Proofreading is incomplete, so please forgive my mistakes. The book can be purchased here.]
Summary of
Roland Breeur
[Breeur’s academia.edu page and researchgate page]
Lies – Imposture – Stupidity
Part 2
Imposture
Ch.3
The Imposter
3.0
“Introduction”
Brief summary (collecting those below):
(3.0.1) The common conception of an impostor is that they are “someone who invents a story that is not their own. He or she is trying to pretend to be someone else” (54). Yet, Breeur notes that imposture is a little more complex than this, because it also involves the impostor’s ability “to blur the lines that normally allow us to establish the difference between the true and the false” (54). (3.0.2) Jean-Bertrand Pontalis defines the impostor as someone who “usurps an identity,” inventing for themself a story that is not their own but that they adhere to their identity, thereby effectively posing themselves as someone they are not (54). Breeur gives a couple examples. {1} “James Macpherson imposes himself as the one who discovered the Gaelic Iliad written by Ossian, whereas he himself was its author” (54). {2} Brigido Lara was a Mexican art forger. He forged “an unprecedented number of pre-Columbian artworks the authenticity of which had been confirmed by the Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia” (54). In 1974, he was arrested for stealing many of them. To defend himself, he confessed that “these objects were all fakes and that he had made them” (54). Yet later he was hired by the “Museum of | Anthropology in Xalapa – as an expert in forgery, his work would consist in sorting through the national collections to keep only the real ones” (54). (Here the imposture both “worked” in its deceptive capacity and later it proved beneficial in working to prevent deception. (3.0.3) Han Van Meegeren is another famous forger. He made fake Vermeers that both experts and the press were convinced were authentic. It was only a good while later that Meegeren’s deception was exposed. “So, it worked” (55). (3.0.4) But sometimes attempts at imposture do not work: “Dimitri II, a false descendant of Ivan The Terrible who was proclaimed tsar on June 20, 1606, was unmasked and murdered a few months later. His body was butchered and his ashes sent back with cannons to Poland, his country of origin” (55). Normally when we catch impostors, the punishment is often severe: “As a rule, the recall, or the revenge, of reality is inexorable” (55). Why is this? Breeur doubts that it is because we cherish the truth so much. Rather, “As Deleuze once said, everyone knows very well that, in fact, we rarely seek the truth – our interests and also our stupidity keep us from the truth even more inveterately than do our mistakes” (55). Breeur says we punish caught impostors not for deceiving us, but for getting caught, for failing to deceive us. In fact, we would even celebrate impostors who were able to carry their deception to their death, only to be discovered afterward: “If we punish counterfeiters, it would be because they missed their objective, i.e. because they had failed. Had they been successful – though this evokes the paradoxical idea of a successful impostor, which may seem to be an oxymoron, there are those who are not unmasked until after their death, or those we do not dare to unmask, and therefore those who can, in a sense, be considered successes – we would have honored them” (55). This is because we are fascinated with and admire their ability to neutralize reality and make appearing coincide with being, which is a feat normally only accomplished by our dreams. (Perhaps, we admire them for overcoming reality with the power of appearances.) “I think that what fascinates us is the idea that their deception or deceit had the power to neutralize reality. Thus, and this is the central element of the idea which I would like to pursue, we admire or are ensorcelled by those who deceive us less for the content of what they make us believe than for the very fact of having deceived us, i.e. less for the exceptional life which they claim to have lived and more for the mediocrity of the one which they were able to eclipse. The life of a successful impostor is one in which being and appearing coincide at a point that is only achieved in the realm of dreams. Hence, the imposture fascinates, in as much as it looks like a dream made real” (55). The success of impostors also serves another purpose, namely, to “to deceive and convince themselves. […] We are the spectators who confirm and reinforce them in their game of concealment or dissimulation” (55).
[Imposture and Blurring the Lines Between True and False]
[The Impostor as One Who Lives an Alternate Identity]
[Van Meegeren’s Vermeer Forgeries]
[Our Love of the Impostor’s Overcoming and Neutralizing of Reality by Making Appearing Coincide with Being, as with Dreams]
Summary
[Imposture and Blurring the Lines Between True and False]
[The common conception of an impostor is that they are “someone who invents a story that is not their own. He or she is trying to pretend to be someone else” (54). Yet, Breeur notes that imposture is a little more complex than this, because it also involves the impostor’s ability “to blur the lines that normally allow us to establish the difference between the true and the false” (54).]
[ditto]
The impostor is commonly described as someone who invents a story that is not their own. He or she is trying to pretend to be someone else. However, this attempt is very complex. Among other things, it only works to the extent that the impostor is able to blur the lines that normally allow us to establish the difference between the true and the false. That is what this chapter is all about.
(54)
[The Impostor as One Who Lives an Alternate Identity]
[Jean-Bertrand Pontalis defines the impostor as someone who “usurps an identity,” inventing for themself a story that is not their own but that they adhere to their identity, thereby effectively posing themselves as someone they are not (54). Breeur gives a couple examples. {1} “James Macpherson imposes himself as the one who discovered the Gaelic Iliad written by Ossian, whereas he himself was its author” (54). {2} Brigido Lara was a Mexican art forger. He forged “an unprecedented number of pre-Columbian artworks the authenticity of which had been confirmed by the Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia” (54). In 1974, he was arrested for stealing many of them. To defend himself, he confessed that “these objects were all fakes and that he had made them” (54). Yet later he was hired by the “Museum of | Anthropology in Xalapa – as an expert in forgery, his work would consist in sorting through the national collections to keep only the real ones” (54). (Here the imposture both “worked” in its deceptive capacity and later it proved beneficial in working to prevent deception.]
[ditto]
So, what is an impostor? Jean-Bertrand Pontalis gives the following definition: “The impostor [is] the one who usurps an identity, [who] invents for himself to the point of adhering to it a story that is not his own [and who] poses as someone else, and it works.”59 Thus, James Macpherson imposes himself as the one who discovered the Gaelic Iliad written by Ossian, whereas he himself was its author. Or Brigido Lara, arrested in 1974 by the Mexican police for “stealing” an unprecedented number of pre-Columbian artworks the authenticity of which had been confirmed by the Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia, who was forced, in order to defend himself, to admit that these objects were all fakes and that he had made them. Afterwards, he was hired at the Museum of | Anthropology in Xalapa – as an expert in forgery, his work would consist in sorting through the national collections to keep only the real ones. “It works,” in the sense that even a kind of reminder of reality is beneficial.
(54-55)
59. Pontalis quoted in Andree Bauduin, Psychanalyse de l’imposture (Paris: PUF, 2007), p. II.
(54)
[Van Meegeren’s Vermeer Forgeries]
[Han Van Meegeren is another famous forger. He made fake Vermeers that both experts and the press were convinced were authentic. It was only a good while later that Meegeren’s deception was exposed. “So, it worked” (55).]
[ditto]
Or let us take the exquisite example of the famous forger Han Van Meegeren, born in 1889, who put one over on the critics by making a dozen false Vermeers. The most eminent experts of that time, as well as the press, almost unanimously considered them to be masterpieces of the Delft master. It was not until the end of World War II, when the police seized Goering’s private collection and the painter was convicted of treason for selling a Vermeer to the Nazi Marshal, that the deception was exposed. So, it worked.60
(55)
60. See Luigi Guarneri, La double vie de Vermeer, Trans. Marguerite Pozzoli (Aries: Actes Sud, 2007).
(55)
[Our Love of the Impostor’s Overcoming and Neutralizing of Reality by Making Appearing Coincide with Being, as with Dreams]
[But sometimes attempts at imposture do not work: “Dimitri II, a false descendant of Ivan The Terrible who was proclaimed tsar on June 20, 1606, was unmasked and murdered a few months later. His body was butchered and his ashes sent back with cannons to Poland, his country of origin” (55). Normally when we catch impostors, the punishment is often severe: “As a rule, the recall, or the revenge, of reality is inexorable” (55). Why is this? Breeur doubts that it is because we cherish the truth so much. Rather, “As Deleuze once said, everyone knows very well that, in fact, we rarely seek the truth – our interests and also our stupidity keep us from the truth even more inveterately than do our mistakes” (55). Breeur says we punish caught impostors not for deceiving us, but for getting caught, for failing to deceive us. In fact, we would even celebrate impostors who were able to carry their deception to their death, only to be discovered afterward: “If we punish counterfeiters, it would be because they missed their objective, i.e. because they had failed. Had they been successful – though this evokes the paradoxical idea of a successful impostor, which may seem to be an oxymoron, there are those who are not unmasked until after their death, or those we do not dare to unmask, and therefore those who can, in a sense, be considered successes – we would have honored them” (55). This is because we are fascinated with and admire their ability to neutralize reality and make appearing coincide with being, which is a feat normally only accomplished by our dreams. (Perhaps, we admire them for overcoming reality with the power of appearances.) “I think that what fascinates us is the idea that their deception or deceit had the power to neutralize reality. Thus, and this is the central element of the idea which I would like to pursue, we admire or are ensorcelled by those who deceive us less for the content of what they make us believe than for the very fact of having deceived us, i.e. less for the exceptional life which they claim to have lived and more for the mediocrity of the one which they were able to eclipse. The life of a successful impostor is one in which being and appearing coincide at a point that is only achieved in the realm of dreams. Hence, the imposture fascinates, in as much as it looks like a dream made real” (55). The success of impostors also serves another purpose, namely, to “to deceive and convince themselves. […] We are the spectators who confirm and reinforce them in their game of concealment or dissimulation” (55).]
[ditto]
But does it always work? Of course not. Dimitri II, a false descendant of Ivan The Terrible who was proclaimed tsar on June 20, 1606, was unmasked and murdered a few months later. His body was butchered and his ashes sent back with cannons to Poland, his country of origin. As a rule, the recall, or the revenge, of reality is inexorable. Why? It would be too easy to say that, out of love for the truth, we do not like to be fooled. As Deleuze once said, everyone knows very well that, in fact, we rarely seek the truth – our interests and also our stupidity keep us from the truth even more inveterately than do our mistakes.61 If we punish counterfeiters, it would be because they missed their objective, i.e. because they had failed. Had they been successful – though this evokes the paradoxical idea of a successful impostor, which may seem to be an oxymoron, there are those who are not unmasked until after their death, or those we do not dare to unmask, and therefore those who can, in a sense, be considered successes – we would have honored them. As a consequence, I do not think that in the fascination we feel for imposters of whatever stripe | we express above all an admiration for someone who seemed capable of giving what is false the appearances of the truth. Rather, I think that what fascinates us is the idea that their deception or deceit had the power to neutralize reality. Thus, and this is the central element of the idea which I would like to pursue, we admire or are ensorcelled by those who deceive us less for the content of what they make us believe than for the very fact of having deceived us, i.e. less for the exceptional life which they claim to have lived and more for the mediocrity of the one which they were able to eclipse. The life of a successful impostor is one in which being and appearing coincide at a point that is only achieved in the realm of dreams. Hence, the imposture fascinates, in as much as it looks like a dream made real. Also, it has an internal purpose: Accomplished counterfeiters (and they are rare, the majority being limited to the category of crooks who stop or are blocked halfway) seek less to deceive us than to deceive and convince themselves. We are the spectators who confirm and reinforce them in their game of concealment or dissimulation.
(55-56)
61. Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche et la philosophie (Paris: PUF, I962), p. 108.
(55)
Breeur, Roland. Lies – Imposture – Stupidity. Vilnius: Jonas ir Jakubas, 2019.
The book can be purchased here.
Breeur’s academia.edu page and researchgate page.
.
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