#the phony

I want to take a moment to consider an enormously useful, albeit declining slang word in English: the word “phony.”  Specifically, I wish to underscore a distinction, already present in language, between the faux or fake, which involves a simple first-order deception, and the phony, which incorporates a double deception.  To say in casual conversation that someone or something is a “phony” is in fact a highly precise designation, signifying a particular mode of pretense.  On the part of the beholder, phoniness always involves a seeing-through, whether the phony detail is a tiny affectation or a grand performance.  That is to say, no one ever declares “What a big phony!” without having gained a sense of superiority for having seen things “as they really are.”  At the same time, the fact that such accusations are usually both contemptuous and dismissive is an indicator that such phoniness is understood as an ongoing project—not something to be debunked and instantaneously done away with.  A “big phony” is recognized as such because he or she continues to attempt to deceive; if the beholder is no longer falling for it, then someone else might be.  In this sense, the concept of the phony positions having-been-seen-through as a central ontological attribute.

A worthy trophy for the mantelpiece.