How to make a stick and other recipes for unnatural disaster

Abstract

“It is incumbent upon him [Don Quixote] to fulfill the promise of the books. It is his task to recreate the epic, though by a reverse process: the epic recounted (or claimed to recount) real exploits, offering them to our memory; Don Quixote on the other hand, must endow with reality the signs-without-content of the narrative. His adventures will be a deciphering of the world: a diligent search over the entire surface of the earth for the forms that will prove that what the books say is true. Each exploit must be a proof: it consists, not in a real triumph – which is why victory is not really important – but in an attempt to transform reality into a sign. Don Quixote reads the world in order to prove his books. And the only proofs he gives himself are the glittering reflection of resemblances.”

Michel Foucault, (on Don Quixote) The Order of Things