Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

• Majid Parvanehpour ¹
• Said Binayemotlagh ²

¹ PhD in philosophy from University of Isfahan

² Associate Professor, University of Isfahan

Abstract

This paper would attempt to illustrate some possible links between Deleuze's way of thinking and the practice of modern and post-modern artists. This analogy is defined and explained in the context of Deleuze's anti-Platonism to see if there is a relation between Deleuze's struggle to oppose anti-Platonism, his desire to create a new way of thinking, and what modern artists actually did in their practice. Hence, after defining some of the concepts and showing the importance and function of them in modern art, the paper would try to trace the same concepts in Deleuze's thought. It will then explain Deleuze's anti-Platonism putting emphasis on the concept of simulacrum; meanwhile, it will briefly answer Badiou's critique of Deleuze's anti-Platonism. Finally, it would show that Deleuze, relying on this opposition, and in fact inspired by intellectual processes used by post-modern artists, is trying to find a third way for thinking to a world full of images. He introduces a path that neither goes back and nor, as we find with Baudrillard, sees the world as an apocalyptic world of images in which we wander.

Highlights

Appropriation in Deleuze's Philosophy:

An Essay on Deleuze's Anti-Platonism and its Relation with Modern Art

Majid Parvanehpour¹, Said Binayemotlagh²

¹   PhD in philosophy from University of Isfahan, E-mail: mp291358@gmail.com

²   Associate Professor, University of Isfahan (responsible author) E-mail: said_binayemotlagh@yahoo.fr

Abstract

This paper would attempt to illustrate some possible links between Deleuze's way of thinking and the practice of modern and post-modern artists. This analogy is defined and explained in the context of Deleuze's anti-Platonism to see if there is a relation between Deleuze's struggle to oppose anti-Platonism, his desire to create a new way of thinking, and what modern artists actually did in their practice. Hence, after defining some of the concepts and showing the importance and function of them in modern art, the paper would try to trace the same concepts in Deleuze's thought. It will then explain Deleuze's anti-Platonism putting emphasis on the concept of simulacrum; meanwhile, it will briefly answer Badiou's critique of Deleuze's anti-Platonism. Finally, it would show that Deleuze, relying on this opposition, and in fact inspired by intellectual processes used by post-modern artists, is trying to find a third way for thinking to a world full of images. He introduces a path that neither goes back and nor, as we find with Baudrillard, sees the world as an apocalyptic world of images in which we wander.

Keywords: Deleuze, modern art, anti-Platonism, simulacrum, Badiou, Baudrillard

Introduction      

The history of thinking is a testament to the claim that almost all intellectual forms have defined themselves in comparison or in opposition to other intellectual forms. The history of modern art has also witnessed a variety of contradictions, oppositions, orientations, and parallels. Almost no artistic approach can be found in the world of modern art which does not identify itself in the struggle with another movement or in the struggle against another artistic style. But the most striking manifestation of this struggle in the modern art camp can be regarded as an attempt to answer this question that what art is? Gilles Deleuze, among other things, is a modern philosopher who has stated his anti-Platonism in line with modern art. "The theory of thought is like painting:" Deleuze says, "it needs that revolution which took art from representation to abstraction. This is the aim of a theory of thought without image” (Deleuze, 1994: 276(

Art and Thinking: Appropriation

Thinking without image is indeed the thinking set free of the representation. In his detailed reflections, particularly in the third chapter of Difference and Repetition, Deleuze points his critique towards the long and lasting domination of representation over philosophers and thinking. If Deleuze sees his own thinking as an attempt to become free of representation, and if he thinks of his way of thinking as to be like what happened in the field of painting, one could ask, what Deleuze's perspective on thinking has in common with contemporary art?

Deleuze and Anti-Platonism

In his book Difference and Repetition Deleuze announces the task of modern philosophy to be the reversal of Platonism. According to him, during this reversal, many Platonic characteristics are not only not inevitable but desirable (Deleuze, 1994: 59). All that Deleuze has in mind when he talks about the difference is that it should not be subjugated to the "same" or " the One".

Simulacrum: a lie of a lie of lie of lie…

Simulacrum, which has translated it in Persian mainly as vanemoodeh is a term used by anti-Platonic thinkers. This term plays a key role in French anti-Platonism of the 1960s (Lawlor 2005: 539). This term is rooted in Nietzsche's and Heidegger's reflections, and French thinkers like Foucault, Deleuze, and Derrida use it to complicate the relationship between the original and the image (ibid). ‘Simulacrum’ is the Latin equivalent of the Greek eidolon. While both terms could be rendered in English as ‘image’, ‘simulacrum’ is based on the Latin verb similar, which means to be similar or to feign. It also has a sense of ‘likewise’ or ‘at the same time’; hence ‘simultaneous’. Eidolon, on the other hand, is etymologically connected to the term eidos, which itself comes from the verb horao, ‘to see’. Thus an eidolon is something seen or the look of something. But, like ‘simulacrum’, the word ‘eidolon’ also suggests something feigned or false, like a phantasm; hence the English word ‘idol’. Thus we find Plato in the Republic placing the poets third from the truth since they produce nothing but eidola, images of things, which are themselves images of the eidē or ideas or forms. "(ibid).

Conclusion

We have seen that there’s a parallel between what Deleuze does in the field of thought by appropriating his predecessors in philosophy and how modern artists use earlier works in the history of art. Also, the originality of Deleuze's lies not in following a transcendent pattern, but in relying on his acceptance of difference. All his new thinking became possible, however, by a mutual relationship with the art world.

References

1. Deleuze, Gilles (1994), Difference and Repetition, trans. John Protevi, Columbia University Press
2. Patton, Paul (1994), “Anti-Platonism and Art”, in Gilles Deleuze and the Theatre of Philosophy, eds., Constantine V. Bondas, Dorothea Olkowski, Routledge
3. Sutton, Damian and Martin-Jones, David (2008), Deleuze Reframed, I. B. TAURIS
4. 4.     Protevi, John (2010), “An Approach to Difference and Repetition”, Journal of Philosophy: A Cross-Disciplinary Inquiry, 5 (11). p. 35-43
5. Badiou, Alain (1999), Deleuze: The Clamor of Being, trans. Louise Burchill: University of Minnesota Press
6. 6.     . Widder, Nathan (2001), “The Rights of Simulacra: Deleuze and the Univocity of Being”, Continental Philosophy Review, 34. pp. 437-453
7. Massumi, Brian (1987), “Realer Than Real”, Copyright. 1. p. 90-97
8. Nietzsche, Friedrich (1997) Twilight of the Idols, trans. Richard Polt., Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.

Keywords

• Deleuze
• modern art
• anti-Platonism
• simulacrum
• Badiou
• Baudrillard