Another Use of the Concept of the Simulacrum: Deleuze, Lucretius and the Practical Critique of Demystification

• Published in: Deleuze & Guattari Studies 2014-02, Vol.8 (1), p.70-93
• Main Author: Johnson, Ryan J
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Case studies; Deleuze, Gilles; Ethics; Lucretius (Titus Lucretius Carus); Philosophy and Religion; Physics
• ISSN: 1750-2241; 2398-9777; 1755-1684; 2398-9785
• DOI: 10.3366/dls.2014.0134

While many of the most important figures in the history of philosophy have employed the concept of the simulacrum in one way or another, a detailed study of this usage has yet to be written. In this essay, I will attempt to tell the story of a sequence in that history of that usage, by focusing on one of Deleuze's case studies of the concept of the simulacrum. To do so, I will focus primarily on one the appendices to The Logic of Sense : 'Lucretius and the Simulacrum'. In order to understand what I will call the Deleuze-Lucretius encounter, I will proceed as follows. After a few initial guiding remarks regarding the general project of the 'inversion of Platonism', we will outline some of the most fundamental features of atomistic physics. This will allow us to discuss Lucretius' thoughts on the clinamen, the swerve. This, in turn, leads directly to the concept of the simulacrum. With such a picture of Lucretian physics in hand, I will pivot to a discussion of Lucretius' ethics. The ethics consists of a critique of superstition in terms of a general project of demystification. Although this sequence will concentrate mostly on what became one of the appendices to The Logic of Sense , I will end by looking at the more general usage of Lucretian atomism, especially as it functions in Difference and Repetition and The Logic of Sense .