Exordium
The stories to follow are well known, widely discussed and, more importantly, they are built upon and perpetuated by the falsehoods in their telling. Consequently, only those involved in these stories are the “knowers” (Totland, 1997: 3.2.2). They alone know the truth; the reality of the events that took place. In this essay I will discuss ÆSOP’s Fable of The Wolf and The Crane, the ongoing tale of Cardi B vs Nicki Minaj—specifically, the drama surrounding the song MotorSport, in which the two rappers collaborated and the myth of Joseph Beuys crashing his Stuka plane in The Crimea in 1944. I will be discussing these myths, fables and tales, collectively calling them stories, in terms of the falsehoods they tell. The aim is to explore the knowledge that we can gain from these falsehoods. The essay is an inquiry into whether our knowledge can be bettered: if we can know more of the story by believing these falsehoods, or whether they lead us further away from the truth. I will be applying two frameworks in my evaluation of knowledge; factual analysis and logical deduction and Herzog’s ecstatic truth. What I find to be the case is that there is something in the telling of a falsehood that may proffer an alternate truth—one that may give more to truth than logic would allow. This is what I aim to prove.
Narratio
I write this essay positioning myself as an ‘observer’ of the stories that are to be mentioned. That is, I only understand what I have found; not through living it (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980: 26) but by reading around it. I by no means know it. In the telling of these stories there is a truth that can be quantified as fact; either it happened, or it did not. All snakes have scales, this we know is a fact, a copperhead is a type of snake, therefore copperheads have scales. This is an example of Modus Ponens Latin for ‘the mode that affirms’. A rabbit is not a snake; therefore, rabbits do not have scales. This is Modus Tollens “Latin for the mode that denies” (Rosen, 2007: 63) . These statements are both logical truths. By utilising logical truth and an objectivistic worldview, I can understand my three stories through familiarising myself with them and their facts. I am able to understand them through their veracity or falsehood (Totland, 1997). Therefore, I am questioning the viability of these stories for the sake of our understanding and knowledge. For if we solely discover through fact, and acknowledge a fake as a fake, we are met with a somewhat clouded deduction, ignorant of what may be going on behind the scenes. Herzog (2010) introduces an alternate to logical truth, one that searches for a deeper truth. A truth that speaks of human emotion, thinking and reason. This he calls ecstatic truth. It is ephemeral, difficult to describe and understand, but I believe it will quantify the falsehoods in our three stories. One of Herzog’s principles of ecstatic truth is that it the result of “fabrication and imagination” alone suggesting that ecstatic truth can be birthed from a falsehood. And, that a falsehood can be a truth all the same (Ebert, 1999).
Propositio
Intention seems to be key in the telling of a falsehood, thus in ecstatic truth. By intention I wish to enquire as to why a falsehood may be told. We can pose the theory that the teller of a story could intentionally commit a falsehood. What I now wish to uncover is why the teller would intentionally commit a falsehood and the knowledge that we may gain from intentionally and unintentionally being told a falsehood, if we chose to believe it. Leonard (1959: 172) further looks into this, hypothesising that a statement can be sincere or insincere in its telling and this is “logically independent of whether it is true or is false”. If this is true, we know that a falsehood can be sincere or insincere in its telling. If a falsehood is, in fact, honest in its telling, what knowledge do we gain from this? For it is not malicious, it is not intending to trick us, the storyteller wishes us to believe them and for us to gain something from the falsehood in their story. I direct the reader to ÆSOP’s fable of The Wolf and the Crane. In which, to relieve himself of a bone that has been lodged in his throat, a wolf offers a crane a large amount of money to remove the bone. She does this by means of putting her beak and head into the jaws of the wolf. After removing the bone, the crane asks for her reward. The wolf states “Why, you have surely already had a sufficient recompense, in having been permitted to draw out your head in safety from the mouth and jaws of a wolf” (ÆSOP). The wolf is intentionally committing a falsehood, but not for the reason we predict; so that he can eat the crane. Instead he does this sincerely to teach her a lesson; to impart knowledge upon her. In gambling with evil and fate be thankful to leave unscathed. That is her payment; she is still alive to tell the tale and inform others. Adding to not only her own knowledge, but to others as well. The wolf could have told the truth; that he will not pay the crane her sum, but then she would not have gained any knowledge from the exchange. This alternate truth, this knowledge we gain that is separate from logic is an example of Herzog’s ecstatic truth.
The tale of Nicki Minaj and Cardi B is lengthy, and I will endeavor to recount these events succinctly for the purpose of this essay, as I do not wish to lead the reader into pitfalls of conspiracy. Minaj and B collaborated on the song MotorSport alongside the rap collective Migos, they each wrote and recorded a verse on the track. I will be solely focusing on the falsities surrounding the verse written by Nicki Minaj. In October of 2017 B was interviewed on Capital XTRA. When discussing the track B explains that when she first heard Minaj’s verse it was unfinished, “Or at least it’s not the verse that is on right now” (Capital Xtra, 2017:36). This is the first claim we will be examining in terms of falsehood. Minaj addressed B’s claims in a tweet saying, “How can you say someone changed their verse & forget to say Quavo[1] TOLD me to remove my singing part (which I loved) & Atlantic[2] told me to remove your name from my verse per your request?” (Minaj, 2018). We have to read between the lines slightly here, but Minaj is confirming that B was correct in her claim; that Minaj’s original verse is different to the one now on the track[3][4]. So, we can logically deduce the conclusion that B’s statement was not a falsehood. That is, if we choose to believe Minaj’s tweet.
We now have our logical conclusion, we now know the truth: the end of our tale. However, what does this give to our knowledge? The claim was true, but information was withheld; the falsehood lies in the intention. To gain knowledge from this falsehood we must set logic aside and look to ecstatic truth, imagining ourselves as B. For she may have done so unintentionally and been honest in her statement. B falters in her original claim, she first states that the verse was unfinished and then immediately corrects herself. Perhaps she is nervous, she mentions Minaj as being successful and that she herself is new in the industry. Perhaps B’s view of Minaj may have been damaged. She feels as though her idol was unprepared. Unprofessional. Perhaps her claim was merely word vomit. Perhaps the knowledge we can gain from this tale is that it depicts what it is like to be a rising star under the pressure of an interview after collaborating on a hit record. If we believe B’s falsehood it becomes a truth and we can sanction actions from it. We may be able to relate to her and learn from her actions. Like with The Wolf and the Crane, the tale of Cardi B vs Nicki Minaj gives us knowledge if we let it. It teaches us to be vigilant, to ensure that we do not lose our head by waving a somewhat false claim, in the shape of a bone, in front of our more superior colleague.
The falsehoods that unraveled in the myth of Joseph Beuys and his plane crash are his rank within the plane that he was flying, and the Tartar shamans who, upon rescuing him from his wreckage, took him to a tent made of felt. They treated him by rubbing animal fat over his body and bandaging him in felt also. I will be evaluating this through the translation of a letter he wrote in 1944 to the parents of his “onboard companion” (Knöfel, 2013) Hans Laurinck, who was killed in the crash. I call this story a myth as it seems that each time it is retold it shifts and changes. Transforming into another iteration, with alternate facts and falsehoods. After the incident, Beuys paints himself as the pilot of a bomber plane, Laurnick his co. From the letter we understand that Beuys was merely the radio operator and Laurnick his pilot (Knöfel, 2013). We also discover from the letter, that the Tartar shamans that nursed Beuys back to health using fat and felt, the very materials he used in many of his works as an homage to the shamans were not shamans at all, they were in fact Russian workers. Completely demystifying the mythos that Beuys worked on for so many years after the crash. His artistic spiritualism is no more than a farce. However, the Beuys myth is riddled with falsehoods and we cannot be certain that the letter even clarifies anything. For the letter itself could be a complete falsity.
It is stated in article by Ulrike Knöfel (2013) of Ella Ornstein’s translation, that the purpose of the letter is to inform Laurnick’s parents of his death. For this reason, Beuys appears to edit the story to “understate some aspects and overstate others” for the sake of protecting Laurnick’s parents (Knöfel, 2013). If we were to try to understand this logically, to find the factual truth I feel that we would hit many walls. The timeline is hazy, due to the age of the tale and through the work of Beuys and his innumerous altered accounts we are led further away from the truth if we try to understand the story though logic alone. The only logical knowledge we can seem to gauge, from my own perspective and search into this myth, is that Beuys committed many falsehoods in the retelling of his 1944 crash. We can continue speculating, but I do not believe that we will be successful in concluding our search for knowledge with logic. So, our logical knowledge comes to a standstill, but, again, if we look further than fact and fiction; to the ecstatic truth that can be told by the falsehoods Beuys creates, what can we know? Beuys created a mythos, not only surrounding the events of the crash, but also surrounding himself. He becomes an enigma. A self-made shaman in his own right, who has lived to tell his unbelievable tale. According to Bonami (2005) Beuys struggled as an emerging artist. This may be the reasoning behind his use of falsehoods, to attempt to catapult his art and career to the level of his peers through mysticism. We also learn from reading Knöfel’s (2013) article that he wanted to leave his Hitler youth past behind, the falsehoods in his story may be a coping mechanism to forget. The knowledge we can perhaps glimpse at from this myth is reverent. We gain an ecstatic truth of his experience, we can imagine of what it is like to be a young soldier signed to fly a plane, potentially with the mission to bomb another country. We can understand his story through the lens of what it may be like to experience a plane crash, how the events rush and alter from each attempt at recollecting the disaster. Then impossible task and the sorrow of writing the nine-page letter to inform the parents of his best friend that their son is dead. Trying to ease their minds and hearts; not telling Laurnick’s parents of their destructive mission, but emphasising the camaraderie of the pair and the sadness Beuys now feels.
Partitio and Confirmatio
Through the three stories that have been my enquiry for this essay, it is clear that falsehood can give to knowledge in many ways—and more so than we expect. Falsehoods can only do this, however, if we delve and question into a story deeper than its factual surface and authorise the telling of falsehoods. Without this permit, in the analysis of a story that utilises falsehoods we dismiss them as just that: false. Not the truth. If we view stories through their true, logical veracity; fact as true, falsehood as lies it leads us to search further for a more concrete truth. In the example of Nicki Minaj’s verse, in the search for fact about the verse specifically conspiracy videos are suggested within our search results. Conclusions of opinion, taking us yet further from the truth. Met with article upon article examining the minutiae of every interaction between B and Minaj, whether one line of a song was pointed towards one by the other (Rosa, 2018). This is true also with the Beuys myth, as both his story and B’s were told in the age of media which seems to exist upon lying and the stretching of truth. A phenomenon that we must detach from falsehood to allow us to gain knowledge from them. From viewing these falsities through Herzog’s ecstatic truth we can learn more of the intent behind the falsehoods and the reason as to why they were told. In our belief and now understanding of a falsehood we better our knowledge of the story, it may be that we are led to a complex reasoning as to why the falsehood was told; one that is built on falsity itself. Though should we allow ourselves this belief the falsehood transforms into a truth.
Refutatio and Peroratio
Focusing on logic and veracity seems to stop us in our tracks when searching for knowledge and truth within a story built on falsehoods. It is ignoring what seems to be the most important part in these stories: those that tell them. We gain the unsatisfactory knowledge that one or many parties lied and no more of the story, but to believe in these falsehoods enables speculation and imagination as to why a falsehood was told for there must be a reason. One that not only gives to the story, teaching us more of it, but this reason expands our thinking, deepening our understanding and consequently our knowledge. If we wish for veracity through fact to be the end point in a story of falsehoods, so be it, but we may be left dissatisfied and confused. The implications that stem from believing a falsehood however seem endless and therefore our knowledge of the story can grow in tandem. On the same note, I believe that logic should not be dismissed instead, as this increases our knowledge to a certain degree. We should use logic and fact to identify the falsehood, and then through ecstatic truth and enquiry into our discovered falsehood allow our knowledge to be bettered further.
Notes
[1] A rapper of the collective Migos, also credited on the song MotorSport
[2] The record label Cardi B is signed to
[3] Minaj’s original verse can be heard (Daytime Tea Time, 2018) at 00:03:35
[4] Minaj’s recorded verse on MotorSport begins (Migos ATL, 2018) at 00:02:45 and ends at 00:03:55
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New Minds Eye 