Abstract

This chapter examines the case of exception and the truth of the medial. It begins with a discussion of different truth values that the signs on the surface of the media have: the truth of referentiality and the truth of submedial space. The truth of referentiality is scientific truth whereas medial truth concerns the truth of exception. The chapter proceeds by explaining how the truth of sincerity is lost through repetition and suggests that the truth of the submedial, of the hidden subject, of media-ontological suspicion is the truth of the case of exception. It also considers how the avant-garde transports artwork into a state of exception, how the phenomenon of exception is related to the phenomenon of medial sincerity, and how new cases of exception are produced when claims of medial truth deduced from old cases of exception are critiqued.