Pretension as Epistemic Performance: Madness, Genius, and the Verdict of Uptake in Don Quixote

Abstract

Background: Readers of Don Quixote have long divided between two verdicts: the knight is mad, or the knight is a martyr to a disenchanted world. Both readings assume that the truth of his acts lies inside the acts themselves; this paper argues that it lies in the world’s answer. Methods: The paper develops pretension as an epistemic category and constructs a three-term reading grammar — frame, uptake, and aftermath — through Austin, Butler, Goffman, Schechner, and related theories of performance and recognition. It applies this grammar to two structurally opposed scenes in Cervantes’s novel: the inn where Quixote is dubbed a knight and the windmill plain where his wager is refused, and a third, where the verdict is neither granted nor refused but held in dispute. Analysis: At the inn, the keeper grants sanction without belief: the rite is completed, the designation acquires social currency, and Quixote leaves with a standing conferred by others. On the plain, Sancho refuses endorsement of the frame, and the same kind of wager returns to Quixote as error and madness. Conclusion: Madness and genius are not simply differences of content or psychology; they are also verdicts rendered by audiences before whom claims are staged. The paper extends this structure to scholarship itself, where knowledge is never ratified privately but waits on uptake. Novelty: The article reclaims pretension from its moral weight and proposes it as a technical term for performance with consciousness of performance, tested by social uptake.