Thoughts on Simulacrum

[*Sorry about the missing references for this post]

Arguably, simulacra have been misunderstood, in philosophical terms, since Plato. For Plato the production of simulacrum represents the move away from the real and into unreality. Overall, Plato regards simulacrum as merely pretenders of the real that appear as (bad) copies of the real. For example, if I photograph a chair and then paint a picture from that photograph, in a Platonic world, I am continually moving away from the real and into unreality. The Platonic world can therefore provide a hierarchical ordering of reality and realness. Firstly there are the Platonic ideas. These Platonic ideas are the essences of an object that are never realised in the actual world. Secondly, there are the copies that are closest to the essence of the Platonic ideas. For example, a ‘real’ wooden chair is the closest the actual world can come to the Platonic idea of a chair. Thirdly, there are the copies of the copies, which are the simulacrum. For example, a poet who writes about a chair in their poem is producing a simulacrum in the Platonic world. The poet is further away from the Platonic idea of a chair than the carpenter who constructs the chair. This understanding of simulacrum still persists in contemporary academic literature, and is found in the work of Frederic Jameson and Jean Baudrillard. Even if both contemporary scholars agree that simulacrum are dominant in today’s world they both define simulacrum as moving away from the real. This is evident in Jameson’s example of photorealism to define simulacrum and Baudrillard’s argument that we have lost the real and entered into a virtual world of simulation and hyperreality.
In contrast to the Platonic trend of defining simulacrum as the move away from the real, Deleuze argues simulacrum is the (continual) production of the real. On the whole, Deleuzian simulacrum is defined through the task of reversing Platonism, which aims to remove the idea that there are Platonic ideas. The problem of Platonic ideas is it represents an essentialist perspective that generates a privileged and narrow idea of the real. As Deleuze writes ‘the motive of theory of Ideas must be sought in a will to select and to choose. It is a question of “making a difference” of distinguishing the “thing” itself from its images, the orginal from the copy, the model from the simulacrum.’[1] In other words, I should recognise that the chair I sit on is more ‘real’ than the chair I read about in the poem. Against this Platonic world Deleuze argues there is no essential real that serves as the Archimedean point to define everything else. For Deleuze there is only the continual, and creative, production of the real, which is summed up in the maxim ‘everything is production.’[2] This means a chair in a poem or painting is no less real than the chair I use to sit on. Instead, each chair affirms its difference and realness through its presence, which has been generated from a necessity and contingency. Steven Shaviro explains this ‘implosion’ of the real and the simulacrum in terms of the various cartoons and comics of Batman:

Batman is a simulacrum. There is no Platonic Idea of Batman, no model that all the all iterations of Batman would conform to more of less, and in relation to which they could hierarchically according to degree of their resemblance. There is no best of all possible Batmans, no iteration which can be judged more perfect than the rest. Rather, the disparity between the different iterations of Batman, their distance from one another, is itself the only common measure between them. Each Batman arises independently, as a unique “solution” to a common disparity or problem…In the absence of any Platonic criterion, or any Leibnizian God, there is only the disjunctive synthesis which affirms each iteration, one at a time, in its divergence from the rest. This means that any particular Batman is entirely contingent, although the synthesis itself, with its affirmation of all these multiple iterations, responds to a necessity.[3]


Overall, Shaviro is expressing the important point that one Batman cannot be privileged as the real Batman that the rest copy. Instead each Batman is created as a result of necessity and contingency. In Deleuzian terminology it is a disjunctive synthesis that produces each Batman simulacrum. The notion of a disjunctive synthesis is used to account for how the heterogeneous flows of life generate a self, which in this case is the self of Batman. In other words, a disjunctive synthesis is required to produce a simulacrum, and this disjunctive synthesis is entirely contingent and necessary.

[1] Gilles Deleuze, The Logic of Sense (Continuum: London, 2004) p291
[2] Giles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus (Continuum: London, 2004) p4
[3] Steven Shaviro, God or the Body without Organs (http://www.shaviro.com/Othertexts/God.pdf, accessed 12th March 2008) p17

Books on ontology?

Hi there,

I was wondering if anyone could recommend books that focus on the subject of ontology? Especially any books that review the move to consider existance without essense and the transcendence of language. In other words, the move away from the linguistic turn.

Recommended Audio Lectures

I found these audio lectures of Herbert Dreyfus. The lectures are from his course on Heidegger's Being and Time. I can highly recommend them as they have even convinced me to give Being and Time another go. Lets hope I have more luck understanding it this time.

The lectures can be downloaded from here.

Sesame Street Philosophy

Short and funny video:

Difference and Repetition- Reading Notes (Part 1)

In preparation for the Deleuze camp, at Cardiff University (4th-8th August 2008), I thought I had better get reading, in more depth, some Gilles Deleuze.

The book I have decided to start with is Difference and Repetition. Sorry about the lack of critical thoughts. At present I am more concerned with understanding the book. Any thoughts, corrections, and critiques are welcome.

These reading notes are from p1-5 ‘introduction’. I am using the 2004 Continuum edition that is translated by Paul Patton.

Deleuze begins by stating that ‘repetition is not generality’ and the two need distinguished. In defining generality Deleuze claims it has two major orders, ‘the qualitative order of resemblances and quantitative order of equivalences’ (p1). It figures from this definition that repetition needs to avoid resemblances and equivalences. In generality I have the ability to express a point of view that can substitute or exchange a term. For example, I can use any human, as a particular, to express the generality that man is mortal. It is here, I believe, that generality, for Deleuze, is in the paradigm of the general and the particular. This means a generality will state a ‘fact’ about a particularity, and this particularity will have that generality.
To define repetition Deleuze writes ‘repetition is a necessary and justified conduct only in relation to that which cannot be replaced’ (p1). It is here I figure that Deleuze is aiming to remove repetition from the idea of the general and the particular, as Deleuze claims repetition ‘concerns non-exchangeable and non-substitutable singularities’ (p1). At this point Deleuze does not provide a substantial definition of a singularity, but does provide empirical examples. One of these examples is how we cannot exchange or substitute twins with one another. This means, I think, that Deleuze wants repetition to be connected with something unique and singular, ‘as Peguy says, it is not Federation Day which commemorates or represents the fall of Bastille, but the fall of the Bastille which celebrates and repeats in advance all the Federation Day’ (p2). In other words, the fall of the Bastille was a unique and singular event, and not in the order of generality. It is from here Deleuze provides his differentiation between Generality and Repetition:

‘Generality, as generality of the particular….
Repetition as universal of the singular’ (p2)

After the definitions of generality and repetition Deleuze then proceeds to associate generality with the orders of the laws, and consider the phenomenon of scientific experimentation. In this section Deleuze is careful to argue that we do not fall into the trap of connecting repetition with (natural) law. For Deleuze there requires a recognition that scientific experiments are conducted in a ‘closed environment in which phenomenon are defined in terms of a small number of chosen factors’ (p3). However, natural, or real, phenomenon occur in a open or ‘free state’ where ‘everything reacts on everything else’ (p3). In sum, we may state that scientific experiments have the ‘luxury’ of setting the conditions of the experiment. I think the point of this section is scientific experiments cannot, for Deleuze, provide the idea of repetition as unique and singular. The only repetition these experiments find is the general laws of nature, which once again brings us back to the scenario of the general and the particular. This unacceptance of the repetition of the natural can help to explain the move of repetition from the natural sphere to the moral sphere.
For Deleuze repetition in the moral sphere dreams of finding a law, or laws, that is sanctified and makes reiteration possible. Some moralists, according to Deleuze, create the ‘Good’ by aiming for a repetition that is not a ‘law of nature but a law of duty’ (p4). In other words, ‘we’ create principles, such as, for example, do not kill, that can (and ought) to be repeated as a duty. These principles are formed in the mind (i.e. idealism). Deleuze finds this an unacceptable definition of repetition as it still leaves us within the realms of generality, and, if we remember, repetition is not generality. The reason repeating principles is a generality is it is acquiring a habit. Or more accurately, the habit of acquiring habits. In addition, this form of repetition bring us back to resemblance and equivalence, the two concepts Deleuze does not want to associate with his definition of repetition. It is resemblance as we conform to a model and equivalence because we have the same elements of action once the habit is acquired (p5).

Google and Attractors (Part 3)

If we are to believe Claire Colebrook, who claims, in Understanding Deleuze, we are in post-linguistic era, we need to develop theories and approaches that are not language dependent. This means we cannot use discourse analysis or propose a model for communicative action. I do not claim that these approaches are not helpful or should be abandoned. Instead the problem of these approaches is that language is always assumed to be present. In other words, language becomes the transcendent principle and according to Deleuze and Guattari we need to think immanently instead of transcendently. Where can we then turn? In this post I would like to suggest complexity theory can help us out the language impasse. To achieve this I will concentrate, once again, on Google’s search engine. A topic I have discussed previously here and here. In this post I will argue that the language we enter into the search engine functions as a chaotic attractor.
In simple terms an attractor helps to explain the behaviour of a (real) system. For example, if there is a bowl and we put a marble in the bowl, then the point at where the marble rests is referred to as the attractor. However, this example could suggest that attractors are deterministic, in the sense that the outcome is always the same, or that attractors are singular, in the sense that there is only one attractor in a system. Both of these claims are untrue and we need to be careful of proposing determinism. Another example can demonstrate that attractors are not deterministic and multiple. Imagine a game of football/soccer. In the game there are two goalposts situated at each end that act as attractors. As Brian Massumi writes: ‘The field is polarized by two attractors: the goals. All movement in the game will take place between the poles and will tend toward one or the other. They are the physical limits.’[1] Importantly, the goals do not decide the result of the game, but they do determine the movements and variations within the game. The goalposts, as attractors, literally feed into the game.
So how then is this relevant for understanding how Google functions as a search engine when we enter keywords? From a language perspective we could suggest that we are creating what Sassure would term a linguistic sign. This would argue that the keywords entered into Google are the signifier and what is returned from Google is the signified. Both of them together compose the linguistic sign. However, this is exactly the type of thinking we are trying to avoid. There are two clear problems with this type of thinking. The first, as I have mentioned above, is the failure to represent a post-linguistic mode of thinking. To think in terms of linguistic signs means language is a necessary component. The main issue I have with this problem is that language is not always a component of life. In other words, things occur without language (e.g. geological stratification). The second problem Sassure's linguistic sign does not inform us how Google functions as a machine. This is the advantage of replacing the linguistic sign with the idea that the keywords are attractors. Attractors have the benefit of helping to provide an explanation for when a system reaches a stable point. If we return to the football example, we can see how the goals explain how the game settles after 90minutes. Of course, the goals, as attractors, do not fully explain the result of a game. There are other relations of exteriority that require recognition: players, ball, referee, rules…However, the attractors in a system are not there to offer a full explanation, and instead the focus of the analysis should concentrate on how the attractors affect the behaviour of a (dynamic) system. In the case of the keywords entered into Google these influence the behaviour of the sorting machine and explain the emergence of a settled state. In this system the settled state is the website created after a search is executed (i.e. the return page). The point is each time we enter keywords into Google.com we are providing the sorting machine with an attractor. The attractor enters into the system of Google, which can be thought of as the algorithm(s) Google use to download, index, and rank online documents. On the whole, maybe it would be more accurate to realise we are not entering a signifier into Google, but actually entering an attractor. In addition, attractors, in a nonlinear world, continually influence the behaviour and movements of systems throughout the world.

[1] Brian Massumi, Parables For the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation (London: Duke University Press, 2002) p72

Good and Evil versus Good and Bad

According to Deleuze, in Nietzsche and Philosophy, Nietzsche holds an important distinction between active and reactive forces. One of the defining characteristics of reactive forces is they create a distinction between good and evil. In other words, they create a hierarchy. An example of reactive forces is what Nietzsche terms resentment, and is associated with 'slave morality'. The problem with resentiment, as a reactive force, is it says No to life, it is a negation instead of affirmation. We can think of the command 'Thou Shalt Not' as a illustration of reactive forces. The problem of resentment, according to Nietzsche, is we are unable to admire (or even love!) our enemies:

'How much respect has a noble person for his enemies! and such respect is already a bridge of love. After all, he demand his enemy for himself, as his distinction; he can stand no enemy but one in whom to be honored. Conversely, imagine "the enemy" as conceived by a man of resentment - and here is precisely is his deed, his creation: he has conceived "the evil enemy", "the evil one" - and indeed as the fundamental concept from which he then derives, as an after image and counterinstance, a "good one" - himself.' (The Portable Nietzsche, p452)

In other words, resentment, as a reactive force, generates an evil (the other), which produces a good (us). It is hard not to realise that resentment is (omi)present in today's world. Is the war on terror not a war fueled on resentment? We have the axis of evil as the other, and the "good one" as the 'civilised' west (or even the 'coalition of the willing'!)

The problem with resentment is it not only causes a group to resent others as evil, it also acts to repress those who resent. As Deleuze and Guattari would say it is 'desiring our own repression.' An example from a film can illustrate the process of desiring our repression through resentment.

In V for Vendetta a fascist government gets (democratically) voted into the UK government. On the whole, the fascist government gains power through an emergence of resentment of the other, which is viewed as evil. Once the fascist party is in power the removal of the other from the UK occurs. Anyone who is not white and heterosexual is removed from the UK. Through removing the other the British people repress themselves. Instead of affirming life they negate life through creating a majoritarian identity. The majoritarian identity functions as an inhibitor on what people can become. This is the important (ethical) point to realise. That resentment, as a reactive force, represses those who resent.