Philosophy Talk: Nonfiction Is Not (Just) to Be Believed

The Oberlin College Philosophy Department is excited to welcome Assistant Professor Hannah H. Kim of the University of Arizona for her lecture entitled "Nonfiction Is Not (Just) to Be Believed."

Philosophers of fiction routinely rely on an unexamined contrast class: nonfiction. The dominant assumption is that nonfiction is discourse meant to be believed (while fiction is discourse meant to be imagined or make-believed). This paper argues that this assumption about nonfiction is unsatisfying. Focusing on memoir and art criticism, I show that central nonfiction genres are not governed primarily by norms of belief. If nonfiction is not unified by an expectation or invitation to believe, then the make-believe/belief contrast cannot mark the boundary between fiction and nonfiction. We therefore need a more nuanced account of what, if anything, unifies nonfiction, if only to provide a more stable foundation for theorizing about fiction.