Hoaxes and unmasking wonder

I love the idea of thinking about pseudo scientific documents–Fontcuberta could fit in with Lawrence Weschler’s book, Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet Of Wonder: Pronged Ants, Horned Humans, Mice on Toast, and Other Marvels of Jurassic Technology. (Allan Rosenbaum told me a few days ago that Weschler is coming to VCU this spring.) It all makes me wonder (there’s that word again) about the relationship between wonder and hoaxes–Are hoaxes an unmasking of wonder, showing us that our wonder leaves us open to fraud, or is a hoax an ultimate expression of wonder, blurring lines between reality and imagination? there’s a line in Emma Donaghu’s story about Mary Toft, the 18th century woman who gave birth to 18 baby bunnies, where one of the doctors who uncovers the hoax really wanted the miracle to be true, even as he tried to unmask it.