Different Scepticisms

This first chapter serves as an extended introduction and makes the case for the importance of sceptical forms of thinking in Wallace’s writing. Through a discussion of Wallace’s book on the mathematics of infinity, Everything and More (2003), alongside previously undiscussed drafts for Infinite Jest (1996), the chapter shows that the logic of scepticism underpins the recursive and circular patterns that so often structure Wallace’s writing. It explains that Wallace can be understood as an anti-sceptical thinker, as well as the ways in which he can be understood as a sceptic – as a writer who opposes certainty and dogma and is committed to the sceptical project of the continuation of enquiry. The chapter argues that while Wallace opposes forms of Cartesian scepticism as expressions of ‘negative dogmatism’, this stance emerges from a broader commitment to scepticism as the continuation of enquiry.