Connotations 18.1-3 (2008/2009)

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PHILIPP ERCHINGER
“multiply“ that which is reported with that which is “not reported“. It
requires to think of the negative cases in terms of possible, undetected
ones that have never entered our public frames. And it requires to
accept that this strategy of reading may well undermine the very basis
of our established concepts. If all crimes, for example, that are not
reported are taken to be possible crimes that could have been reported,
or may still be reported, as Fosco tries to make everyone believe,
then such common truths as the “moral maxim that Crime
causes its own detection” (211) immediately fall apart because no one
can any longer be certain what exactly is meant by the word crime. A
crime, of course, can only cause its own detection if it is already decided
what constitutes a crime and what does not; but if “crime” is
demonstratively taken to encompass what it obviously, by the entrenched
standards of public belief, does not encompass, then the
whole concept becomes vague and its definition no longer distinguishes
it from what it is not. It becomes semantically indifferent,
ceasing to make a clear-cut difference. If a crime committed can no
longer be clearly discriminated from a crime not committed, then
crime is potentially ubiquitous because every act that appears to be
harmless and trivial could still be a crime. “Yes,” says Fosco, crime
may cause its own detection, but only “the crime you know of. And
what of the rest?” (211). Discerning or perceiving no crime does not
always mean that there is none.
III. The Actuality of the Possible
This episode has two important effects on the form and interpretation
of the whole novel. Firstly, it obviously creates suspicion and distrust.
It suggests an undercurrent of criminal activities below the surface of
the seemingly ordinary, a realm of the possible, or a possible realm
that the reader is not, or not yet, aware of, although it may already be
part of what we, together with the characters, take to constitute the
actual fictional world. Secondly, and in conjunction with this, Fosco’s