The Bullshit Artist: Mystification and Mystagogy
The Bullshit Artist: Mystification and Mystagogy

Summary/Abstract: This paper discusses the problem of knowledge’s indeterminacy with an account of the sophists and bullshit artists. I analyze bullshit as a default, after which I look at the sophists and bullshit artists to subsequently discuss caring about mystery, art, and bullshit (nonsense and madness). The analysis mostly looks at Plato’s account of sophistry while supplementing it with others. I use Bernard Stiegler’s phenomenology to explore the different modes and applications of the term bullshit (nonsense, madness, etc.), understood existentially as a default of being, rather than propositional truth, to show the specific relation between bullshit, techne qua abstraction, and the living experience of indemonstrability, i.e., mystery. The specific relation between aletheia and bullshit artists and sophists will turn out to be their complex ability to appeal to emotion abstractly through concealment and disclosure. Bullshit and art inherently share an ontological unprovability. They can transform the mysterious into mystification through formulae, a lack of care for meaningful critique. We can be initiated into a practice that disregards usefulness, such as art, via mystagogy.

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