WWFD or What Would a Forger Do: A Critical Inquiry of Poorly Argued Contemporary Cases for Forgery. Issue 2 (20th October 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Paananen, Timo S.
• Is Part Of: Open library of humanities. Volume 6:Issue 2(2020)
• Publication Date: 2020-10-20
• DOI: 10.16995/olh.519
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2056-6700

Abstract

This article discusses the contemporary debates on fakes and forgeries and notes the lack of constrained criteria in the evaluation of suspected manuscripts. Instead of controlled criteria, scholars have opted for an informal and non-explicated method—here labeled WWFD (What Would a Forger Do?)—in which an internally consistent story from the first-person perspective of the alleged forger functions as its own justification. Lacking any kind of qualitative control apart from the low bar of internal coherence, WWFD has the potential to make forgeries out of all non-provenanced literary documents. The use of WWFD in practice is documented in three varieties: unconcealed, concealed, and hyperactive. In each of these instances, WWFD is used as a framing device to construct material details as suspicious with little consideration on the warrant of such framing.