#556 Dawn in the Antipodes

If a statement appears monstrous 
but you do not know that it is false, 
listen, but do not question its vera-
city. What misleads us is the inevit-

ability of connecting the text to the 
drawing. It is not enough that the 
drawing of the pipe so closely re-
sembles a pipe. The letters are but 

the image of letters. Never by word 
or action notice the defects of another — 
naïve handwriting, the absence of any
other trace of the artist's presence. The 

story interrupted at every sentence. It 
reveals discourse's ambiguous power 
to deny. To take any sentence from 
the mouth of another person, before 

he has time to utter it, is the height 
of ill-breeding. To paint is not to af-
firm. Perhaps a swipe of a rag will
soon erase the drawing & the text .

Sources:
This Is Not a Pipe, by Michel Foucault
The Ladies’ Book of Etiquette (1860), by Florence Hartley