Factitive Fictions and Possible Worlds

Abstract

Postmodern and objectivist theories share a traditional but unhelpful assumption about fictions. They assume that fictions and the real occupy different and antithetical spaces, disposed one above or over the other. For both objectivist and postmodern theory, fictions are fashioned and feigned symbolic constructs which are essentially ‘at variance with fact’ (OED) and ‘not real’ (Littrt). And for both kinds of theory, language is either factual in the sense that it is a true and adequate duplication of reality, or fictional in that it does not speak the real. The difference between objectivist and postmodern theories here is largely a matter of where the line between fact and fiction is drawn. Objectivist theories generally hold that the line falls between different ways of employing language, and that they can determine which discourses are factual and which are fictional.

Mixture, not homogeneity, governs textual matters.

Thomas Pavel