The anthropological persistence of the aesthetic: Real shadows and textual shadows, real texts and shadow texts

Abstract

The postmodernist opposition to aesthetic illusion has come about only because illusion has been confounded with delusion, or misunderstood as a naive acceptance of the referentiality of words. Our capacity for illusion-making and illusion-receiving is inherently skeptical, cautious, and capable of simultaneously juggling several sophisticated interpretations of perceptual evidence. The concept of "shadow text" is forwarded in an effort to counter a misunderstanding which has been fostered under the presumption of intertextuality. He readily grants, indeed he insists upon, the doubleness of referentiality. Fictional texts represent some fictional object, but at the same time they are caught up in representing the enabling conventions of their own fictional genre. The discussion of how texts refer to other texts rests upon the postulation of "shadow texts" that guide and direct the reading of a fictional texts.