Feigning Ignorance: A Question about a Performance

Sometimes a person presents knowledge as ignorance. This article asks how we can tell that someone has pretended not to know. We define feigned ignorance as the deliberate display of a lack of knowledge or understanding of something specific, by an actor who has that knowledge or understanding. We separate it from seven neighbouring behaviours, from feigned incompetence and feigned folly to concealment and the production of ignorance in another person. We then assess eight cases by the type of source that supports each, from the narrative of Frederick Douglass to the examinations of Elizabeth Young, Brutus and Socrates. One case is documented by the actor's own account and one is probable. Scott supplies a theoretical framework but no specific case. The other five are borderline, contested or fictional. We suggest that the nature of the historical record explains this pattern better than the rarity of the phenomenon does. A successful performance leaves no trace, and what reaches us is mostly masks that have slipped. The frequency of feigned ignorance therefore cannot be measured, and our claim stays limited: the same outward behaviour can arise from different mental states. We propose three criteria for judging probability. We leave six questions open: the function of the performance, its audience, its cost, its effect on the actor over time, how it is valued, and how it differs across cultures