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Continental Philosophy Review 34: 437453, 2001. 2001 Kluwer Academic Publishers.:Printed in the Netherlands.

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The rights of simulacra: Deleuze and the univocity of being


NATHAN WIDDER
Department of Politics, University of Exeter, Amory Building, Exeter EX4 4RJ, UK E-mail: n.e.widder@ex.ac.uk

Abstract. Alain Badious recent monograph on Deleuze argues that Deleuze does not reverse Platonism but instead presents a Platonism of the virtual that appears in his unswerving attention to the univocity of being, and for this reason Deleuze is not truly a thinker of multiplicity but of the One. But this interpretation, which is not unknown in Deleuze literature, rests upon a mistaken conflation of the univocity of being with a Platonist conception of the One. This paper reconstructs the medieval Aristotelian debates around univocity and analogy as they relate to Deleuzes thesis, found primarily in Difference and Repetition, in order to show that Deleuze does indeed reverse Platonism and restore the rights of simulacra and multiplicity.

Introduction Alain Badious recent monograph on Gilles Deleuze is now in English translation as Deleuze: The Clamor of Being. Attacking the superficial doxa of an anarcho-desiring Deleuzianism,1 Badiou declares that Deleuzes fundamental problem is most certainly not to liberate the multiple but to submit thinking to a renewed concept of the One (DCB, p. 11) in which The rights of the heterogeneous are . . . simultaneously imperative and limited (p. 15). Despite his aversion to a Platonism that is in fact only a caricature, Deleuze presents a Platonism of the virtual (p. 46), signalled by his unswerving adherence to the univocity of Being: A single and same voice for the whole thousand-voiced multiple, a single and same Ocean for all the drops, a single clamour of Being for all beings.2 As a virtual sense or voice speaking in all beings, Deleuzes One appears only through a multiplicity of names the pairs of virtual/actual, nomadic/sedentary, deterritorializaiton/reterritorialization, and so on that must be given in order to make clear the univocity between them. This dualism is therefore only a first step that thinking must overcome in order to restore the rightful order of the One and its products, so that two names are required for the One in order to test that the ontological univocity designated by the nominal pair proceeds from a single one of these names (p. 43). The final arrangement is one in which the second name embodies a multiplicity of heterogeneous differences related by disjunction that, because

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it cannot be subsumed by any order of identity, points to the One signified in the first name as a foundation beyond all representation.3 Because it is a disjoined multiplicity, however, it is reduced to not even an image of the One, but rather a simulacrum, a difference without a real status (p. 26). Badiou thus declares that Deleuzean multiplicity can be no more than simulation, or being will be said in two senses (One and Many) and the univocal thesis will be disrupted. But the resulting denigration of the multiple then leaves Deleuze wavering between the unreality of actual beings and their reality, while reintroducing the notion of image when he speaks of a virtual image of actual but unreal beings. Rather than affirming the rights of simulacra, he only verifies their subordinate status. Ultimately Deleuzes virtual remains a transcendence (DCB, p. 46), which domesticates the contingency of events by submitting them to a virtual Event,4 and is therefore incapable of thinking genuine revolution.5 And so, Badiou concludes, it is necessary to present a different song in which the One is not, there are only actual multiplicities and the ground is void (p. 53). This text certainly presents a challenge to those readings of Deleuze that tend to lack ontological rigour. But Badious often overt intention to rival Deleuze as the more genuine thinker of multiplicity should at least raise suspicions of his portrait. It is a joke to suggest that for Deleuze actual multiplicities are unreal, and Deleuzes words are never used to substantiate this claim.6 Further, it is certainly questionable whether the virtual can adequately be characterized as a realm of Oneness and not of disjoined multiplicity, and Badiou finds himself hard pressed to sustain this assertion in the face of Deleuzes explicit analyses of multiplicities that are constitutive (and so not merely simulacral in the sense Badiou uses).7 This difficulty explains Badious own vacillations between a conception of the One as a single voice and as a self-differentiating Whole, and in the latter case between this differentiation as the production of simulacra by the One and as a real plurality that actual multiplicities simulate.8 Finally, there is certainly room to distrust the mapping of Deleuzean vocabulary onto the terrain of the One and the Many when Deleuze himself speaks of a multiple that exceeds such terms.9 To the degree that Badiou admits that the virtual is in fact irreducibly multiple, so that the relation between virtual and actual is one of multiplicity on top of multiplicity, it seems that the attempt not only to align Deleuze with the Platonism that interests Badiou, but also to counterpoise Badious conception of multiplicity to this now Platonized Deleuzeanism, falls apart. Badious entire critique rests upon a conflation of the univocity of being with a Platonist conception of the One. It is through this move that he interprets the single voice in Platonist terms. Similar readings have appeared

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before in Deleuze literature, often taking the form of an insistence on either a unity underlying multiplicity or a reduction of multiplicity to the self-differentiation of the One.10 But univocity, far from being a Platonist doctrine, is in fact an Aristotelian one, even if historically it has been adapted to service a Platonist-Augustinian theology. And even under such circumstances, univocity has little to do with Oneness understood in terms of either a hierarchy of the One over the Many or a self-differentiating One-All. Badiou and others ignore this point, and the effect is a serious misinterpretation of Deleuzes thought. In contrast, a restoration of the meaning of univocity makes clear that Deleuze does indeed execute a reversal of Platonism, affirming the reality of simulacra as well as their foundational status. What follows will provide an overview of the philosophical controversy between analogy and univocity as it relates to Deleuzes highly compressed account in the first chapter of Difference and Repetition. The latter provides the key articulation of the central Deleuzean thesis of the univocity of difference, which is often misunderstood by those who do not appreciate the medieval debates upon which it is premised. As will be seen, univocity is hardly concerned with establishing a unity among differences, but rather with linking differences through their difference. This disjoining remains limited as long as theological and other considerations maintain the primacy of substance over the other categories of being. Once this primacy is overturned, however, univocal being can come to signify difference in itself as an excess implicated in all beings and constituting a simulacrum that overturns any model based on identity or unity. Univocity versus analogy It is true that Deleuze proclaims: There has only ever been one ontological proposition: Being is univocal . . . from Parmenides to Heidegger it is the same voice which is taken up, in an echo which itself forms the whole deployment of the univocal. A single voice raises the clamour of being (DR, p. 35).11 Nonetheless, it is equally clear that it is in the context of Aristotle and his medieval interpreters that the issue of univocity versus analogy must be approached. It is thus with Aristotle that Deleuze begins the chapter on Difference in Itself in Difference and Repetition. Aristotle, Deleuze argues, attempts to sustain a paradigm of organic representation by proclaiming contrariety to be the greatest and most perfect difference. In this schema, difference has the function of specifying or delineating identities within larger, indeterminate genera: thus, for example, the specific differentia rational and winged define the species man and bird, respectively, within the genus animal. As Deleuze

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notes, this arrangement does nothing to determine a concept of difference. Rather, assigning a distinctive concept of difference is confused with the inscription of difference within concepts in general the determination of the concept of difference is confused with the inscription of difference in the identity of an undetermined concept (p. 32). Conversely, a concept of difference in itself will only come to light by examining those differences and relations that are incompatible with identity and representation. The fragility of the schema just described becomes clear when one inquires beyond the level of genus and species, in one direction toward the individual and in the other toward the highest categories. In the first case, the problem of defining the individual emerges: Socrates and Plato are both men, but are ultimately distinguished according to differences that signify the irreducible thisness of each of them, and that cannot be understood with reference to higher categories. Socrates, for example, might be understood as a man with certain characteristics and who is made of this particular material or who is this particular man. This last predication of Socrates is not a general category, so that in the end Socrates is not defined but rather designated,12 which is why Aristotle proclaims that one can have knowledge of more general categories such as species, but only recognition of individuals as belonging to a species.13 A difference thus appears within the individual that, precisely by making the individual unique, prevents it from being subsumed under the identity of its species, except through abstraction. Socrates and Plato may in one sense belong together in the same species, but in another sense they are irreducibly diverse. The second difficulty, on which Deleuze initially focuses, introduces the problem of the categories: above the genera are the highest categories of substance, quantity, quality and so forth, but there is no category that unifies all of them there is, in short, no highest genus. For as Aristotle notes, neither being nor oneness (unity) can operate as a highest identity because unlike a genus they are predicated of differentia themselves. In other words, while the genus animal is predicated of species such as man and bird, it is not predicated of differentia: we say man is an animal, but not winged is an animal. This is because the genus denotes what is common among its members, not what differentiates them. But being and unity are predicated of specific differences thereby signifying both identity and difference precisely because concepts such as winged are equivocal, functioning as differentia within one genus but also as subjects predicated of other genera incommensurable with the first genus, which they divide. And so we do say winged is. But it is impossible for either Unity or Being to be one genus of existing things. For there must be differentiae of each genus, and each differentia

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must be one; but it is impossible either for the species of the genus to be predicated of the specific differentiae, or for the genus to be predicated without its species. Hence if Unity or Being is a genus, there will be no differentia Being or Unity.14 Being and unity remain the most common attributes, applying to all beings, but neither functions as the highest set. Nonetheless, the categories are not left simply diverse and disconnected. Being is not merely homonymous or equivocal: it is not a common predicate whose several meanings are unrelated, such as the word dog, which signifies both a barking animal and a star. Rather, it carries a common sense that can be glimpsed, for example, in the universality of the law of contradiction: whether it be a substance, quality or something else, no being can both be and not be at the same time and under the same relation. As Deleuze says, this common sense is in no way collective, as an identity would be, but is rather distributive and hierarchical (see DR, p. 33). It connects irreducibly heterogeneous differences, and so points again to a difference that is incompatible with identity. But the form of this coupling is left undetermined within Aristotles texts. As is well known, the reintroduction of Aristotles full corpus to the Latin West in the 13th century fomented a crisis in both philosophy and theology, challenging the command that the latter held over the former. But it also provided material to resolve a lingering difficulty within Platonist-Augustinian Christianity concerning the relation between God and the world. For God is not the apex of his created order, but rather transcends it, and this indicates a radical difference between divine and created, such that the former cannot be known through the latter. As a result, any natural or positive knowledge of the divine is imperilled, which in turn reverberates against any rational understanding of the created world. The epistemological dilemma here is similar to that of Platos divided line, in which the Forms can be known and thus an order of physical objects can be determined based on degrees of participation but the Form of the Forms, the Good, remains opaque, because it is not an object of knowledge but rather the source and medium for knowledge, as light is the medium for vision. Since knowledge of this medium would require another medium, and so on ad infinitum, it is strictly speaking impossible to know the Good, the result being that there is no basis for the metaphysical order of Form/copy/image, which is oriented by it.15 In the same way, Augustinian theology lacks the grounds for establishing an order of beings according to their differing distances from a God infinitely removed from all of them. The need, in short, is to establish a relation of the divine to the world that maintains their irreducibility and disjunction. Together with the diversity of

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individuals within a species and the relation among irreducibly distinct categories, there are thus three axes in medieval Christian thought upon which the question of heterogeneous difference is raised. The answer drawn from Aristotle to the problem of the categories analogy or univocity determines the way in which these other problems may be resolved. Hardly subsumable to the Platonist One, univocity is rather deployed by a Platonist theology seeking to relate the One to the Many. Given that being is neither univocal like a genus, nor simply equivocal, Aquinas maintains an analogical conception of being in which various senses are proportioned to one another.16 Such a proportion is clear among the categories, where only substance is capable of self-subsistence, and the other categories gain their being only by adhering to substances. Aquinas extends this idea to the relation between Gods attributes and those of the world, since the latter are contingent upon his existence. Concepts such as wisdom can thereby be said of God in a primary way, and in a subsidiary but related way to his creations, similar to the way a word like healthy applies to organisms (in a primary sense) and to diets (as causing health) or complexions (as displaying it).17 In this way analogy offers a middle position between pure univocity and equivocity of meanings. It further makes possible the establishment of a unidirectional resemblance, whereby creatures, as products of Gods power, are marked by and so resemble him, though God in no way resembles his creations. When men reproduce themselves, agent and effect are of one species and their likeness is a specific likeness. But when the agent is outside the species, there is likeness of form but not specific likeness: the things the sun produces bear a certain likeness to the sun [being sources of energy] but they are not of the same species. If the agent were outside even genus, its effect would bear an even remoter resemblance to the agent, presenting only the sort of analogy that holds between all things that have existence in common. And this is how everything that receives existence from God resembles him; precisely as existing it resembles the primary universal source of all existence . . . But we would not say that God resembles creatures. Mutual likeness obtains between things of the same order but not between cause and effect, as pseudo-Denys says: a portrait can take after a man but a man does not take after his portrait. (ST, 1.1.4.3, pp. 1718) Analogy thus enables Aquinas to maintain a hierarchical relation between God and creatures while allowing human reason to approach the divine through his productions. The order of the world presents man with exemplars of goodness, truth, and perfection that deficiently point towards the infinite perfection of their source. Even though the mode of Gods wisdom eludes our

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understanding because this attribute in no way compromises the simplicity of his substance there is still the possibility of an incomplete knowledge of the divine on earth, which can be fulfilled entirely only through grace. But as Deleuze makes clear, the analogical solution does nothing to answer the question of the diversity of individuals within a species, for these are related by simple commonality and not according to any proportion: what makes Socrates this particular man does not make him more of a man than Plato. As a result, the source of an individuals unique reality will have to be assigned to a nonessential factor, such as matter in Aquinass theory. But since the individual is obviously more real than the species to which it belongs, the analogical relation falters on this point, since it can only understand the being of the individual as an accident. It is henceforth inevitable that analogy falls into an unresolvable difficulty: it must essentially relate being to particular existents, but at the same time it cannot say what constitutes their individuality. For it retains in the particular only that which conforms to the general (matter and form), and seeks the principle of individuation in this or that element of the fully constituted individuals. (DR, p. 38) It is for this reason that Deleuze proclaims univocity to be the only ontological proposition. The univocity of being makes available an alternative distribution of difference no longer tied to the proportion marking the relation between a transcendent One and a derivative multitude, so that Univocal Being is at one and the same time nomadic distribution and crowned anarchy. (p. 37) Here Duns Scotus is the figure who both sets a direction for a philosophy of difference and represents the first error it must overcome, for Scotus still deploys the univocity of being to sustain a Christian divinity. As Deleuze notes, analogy is germane to the realm of judgment.18 In Aristotelian terms, judgment is a form of understanding based upon complex propositions, such as Socrates is white. But judgment, which assigns attributes to a subject, refers back to apprehension as a simple cognition of being, and here there is no room for analogy: between the statements God is [a being] and Socrates is [a being] there can be only univocity or equivocity, and Scotus maintains that in the latter case no natural or rational knowledge of the divine is possible.19 And this means that being as a quidditative (in quid) predication that is, a predication of essence, applying specifically to substances must be univocal between finite and infinite beings.20 Analogy certainly has a role to play in describing the relation of creatures to a God heterogeneous from them but serving as their common measure. But an analogous relation, Scotus maintains, can only be drawn between two things com-

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plemented by some prior moment of univocity, and this is not possible if Gods being remains fully opaque. A univocal concept of being is therefore necessary if there is to be any natural knowledge of God. Scotus attributes this non-generic univocity to Aristotle, maintaining that for Aristotle being is not the highest genus not due to any equivocity of its sense but rather because it is larger than a genus.21 The univocity of being is therefore conceived as that of a transcendental, indifferent to the division between finite and infinite being. Indeed, it is the indifference of this common sense that allows it to be said of various beings without invoking an identity. Goodness, oneness and truth, which are convertible with being, are univocal as well. So too are disjunctive conceptual pairs such as necessary/ contingent or created/uncreated, which together extend across the finite/infinite divide and so are coextensive with being. Even though one member of the pair, such as necessary or uncreated, properly applies only to infinite being, the statement all beings are either necessary or contingent applies to infinite and finite beings without establishing an identity over them. But the principle of indifference allows univocity to be extended even further, not only to different beings but to forms of differentiation. Scotus here applies univocity to pure perfections, which cross the infinite/finite divide and so can be predicated God and some or all of his creatures, but which nonetheless do not establish an identity between infinite and finite beings by virtue of their capacity for modal differentiation. Thus perfections such as wisdom and potency can exist in an infinite mode, and in doing so express a plurality of formal distinctions within the divine essence that in no way compromise its absolute simplicity; in their finite modes, these perfections can apply to creatures according to varying degrees of intensity. These perfections, Scotus holds, differ qualitatively and even heterogeneously, but are nonetheless said univocally of the different beings they predicate. Moreover, being itself is said univocally across their modal differentiations, because the latter are separated by nothing more finite/infinite division itself, and so are not differentiated externally into separate types, the way a genus such as animal is divided into different kinds of animals.22 The theological upshot of this is that one can say God is wise and Socrates is wise without invoking an identity between God and Socrates, but also without wisdom itself being said equivocally even though Gods infinite wisdom eludes human comprehension. More important for Deleuze, the thesis of univocity in this way establishes a common sense not only among heterogeneous beings but individual differentiations (see DR, pp. 3940). But Scotus limits the univocity of being at this point. In particular, he does not extend it to specific and individual differentia, which apply only to finite

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beings as divisions within the categories, and which are not quidditative predicates but qualifications of essence (in quale). There is no univocity between the quidditative and non-quidditative senses of being, but instead a virtual primacy of the quidditative sense, whereby non-quidditative senses are not reducible to it but nonetheless refer to it through adherence to substances: these other senses fall under the umbrella of the quidditative as that which has the power (virtus) to give them being.23 Thus, while Scotuss univocity establishes a relation between finite and infinite substances that otherwise share nothing in common, it is not applied to the third form of heterogeneous difference individual difference. This exception to univocity has the effect of circumscribing Scotuss answer to the problem of individual diversity. Against theories that posit matter, quantity, or some other accident as the principle or individuation, or that define individuation as the power to negate difference without accounting for how a particular individual is this individual, Scotus proffers haecceity as a positive difference exceeding human cognition, which contracts the determinate unity of a species into the numerical unity of the individual.24 This haecceity, he says, is neither matter nor form nor a combination of them, because matter and form are constitutive of quiddities, while haecceity constitutes a material reality beyond the quidditative.25 Scotus thus affirms the excessive nature of individuating haecceity, but still subordinates it to the common quidditative substance it individuates, holding although this common nature is a product of the individuals themselves, it is indifferent and therefore prior to any particular individual.26 This priority, which in no way organizes individual differences according to a common sense but only affirms that fully-formed individuals fall within the higher identity of their species, is treated as if it were sufficient to answer the problem of diversity within species. And because Scotus holds the individuality of God to be based not on any combination and contraction, but rather his infinity and simplicity, haecceity is left to apply only in the realm of finite beings, thus lacking sufficient status to be considered for univocity. In this way, divine transcendence is secured. For without the rule of indifference to limit the univocity of being to transcendentals, it would be impossible to delineate the concepts that can and cannot be said of God, and the result would be either pantheism or negative theology, which Scotus finds incoherent (see PW, pp. 1516). It is here that Deleuze highlights the enemy he [Scotus] tried to escape in accordance with the requirements of Christianity: pantheism, into which he would have fallen if the common being were not neutral (DR, p. 39). The result, however, is that a move to an ontology of difference is foreclosed. What is required, Deleuze says, is

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a plastic, anarchic and nomadic principle, contemporaneous with the process of individuation, no less capable of dissolving and destroying individuals than of constituting them temporarily; intrinsic modalities of being, passing from one individual to another, circulating and communicating underneath matters and forms. The individuating is not the simple individual. In these conditions, it is not enough to say that individuation differs in kind from the determination of species. It is not even enough to say this in the manner of Duns Scotus, who was nevertheless not content to analyse the elements of an individual but went as far as the conception of individuation as the ultimate actuality of form. We must show not only how individuating difference differs in kind from specific difference, but primarily and above all how individuation properly precedes matter and form, species and parts, and every other element of the constituted individual. (p. 38) In other words, it is essential to overturn the primacy of substance, of the selfsubsistent or identical, and so too any infinite being that transcends and governs the world of finite beings and becoming. It is necessary to situate an originary web of difference from which individual identities both appear and dissolve. Accomplishing this would not only demolish the Christian God, but affirm the differences by which individuals always exceed categorization according to similarity and sameness. These differences could be neither indifferent to one another for this would imply their being self-contained nor related through a common identity. They would instead have to be linked through their difference a disjoining that univocity has always embodied. Univocity might still imply a sameness, but it is nothing other than this same excessiveness of all beings. In this way, univocal being is said no longer indifferently of fully-constituted beings that share nothing in common, but of the difference immanent to them that escapes representation and compels their self-overcoming. It is said, in short, of difference itself. This task marks out the place of Spinoza and Nietzsche in the unfolding of the thesis of univocity. Spinozas univocity between substance and modes is expressive rather than indifferent. Nevertheless, substance retains an independence over and against the modes, and this can be overcome only at the price of a more general categorical reversal according to which being is said of becoming, identity of that which is different, the one of the multiple, etc. That identity not be first, that it exist as a principle but as a second principle, as a principle become; that it revolve around the Different (DR, p. 40). And this reversal is achieved by Nietzsches ontology of constitutive forces and the corresponding movement of eternal return. A thing for Nietzsche is a product of heterogeneous forces whose differences cannot be mediated forces are, in short, always in a relation of disjunction and this is why the relation of force to force is always one that affirms difference.27 Forces can be reduced neither

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to equality nor unambiguous hierarchy, since these options reinstate standard notions of identity, and so they are always in relations of domination and submission, but also power and resistance. And though the combination of these forces can give rise to a slavish will to power that denies heterogeneity and wills a world constituted in terms of identity and opposition, this in no way eliminates the affirmation of a noble will that stretches beyond good and evil. The affirmative movement that correlates with this will to power is that of eternal return, which submits forces to a synthesis that continually moves them out of joint. The eternal return thus means, as Deleuze often says, not that the same or the identical returns in this movement, but rather that it is the returning that is the same: returning, as disjoining, is the being or sameness of becoming. The eternal return has no other sense but this: the absence of any assignable origin in other words, the assignation of difference as the origin, which then relates different to different in order to make it (or them) return as such. In this sense, the eternal return is indeed the consequence of a difference which is originary, pure, synthetic and in-itself (which Nietzsche called will to power). (DR, p. 125) Here again, the univocity expressed in this sameness is not to be confused with the Platonist One, even where this One is internally self-differentiating. Rather, it is what overturns this very model, affirming simulacra as the multiplicity that escapes the One and the Many. The overturning of Platonism The reversal of Platonism does not mean simply that the Many is elevated over the One; nor does it mean showing, in a Neoplatonist sense, that the One is always already Many. Such routes may advance thought beyond representation, but since they come at the price of positing a transcendence, they fail to advance thought towards a concept of difference in itself. Further, as Deleuze says, a simple reversal has the disadvantage of being abstract; it leaves the motivation of Platonism in the shadows . . . to reverse Platonism must mean to bring this motivation out into the light of the day, to track it down the way Plato tracks down the Sophist.28 We have already seen how univocity is worked out in the terms of Aristotelian organic representation. But there is still a need for a step back to Plato, where The Idea has . . . not yet chosen to relate difference to the identity of a concept in general: it has not given up hope of finding a pure concept of difference in itself (DR, p. 59). While

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Aristotle puts difference in the service of specifying indeterminate genera, criticizing Platos dialectic for failing to satisfy the requirements of this project (see DR, p. 59; PS, p. 254), Plato is concerned with an earlier battle to separate the legitimate difference of the copy from the disingenuous difference of the simulacrum. Both encounter an excessive difference, but it is Plato who is concerned to track it down, to pinpoint the sophist as the false pretender as such, in order to define the being (or rather the nonbeing) of the simulacrum (PS, p. 256). In this way, Plato refuses to treat this non-being as a simple negation of being. As a result, he indicates the direction needed to execute a reversal.29 The significance of simulacra is displayed in their power to demolish the hierarchy of original and copy. According to this model a physical object, for example, is a copy of its Form, while simulacra such as shadows, reflections, mirages, and even artwork, are copies of the physical object. But the character of a good simulation is precisely that it appears to be as real as the thing it copies, and this duplicity cannot be accounted for according to an order that defines the simulation as merely a copy twice removed. And so the simulacrum must be understood further as an unfounded pretension, concealing a dissimilarity which is an internal unbalance (PS, p. 257). While a legitimate copy retains an internal resemblance to its Form, the simulacrum contains a dissimilarity, albeit one that affects an appearance of resemblance or correspondence. The simulacrum is built upon a disparity or upon a difference. It internalizes a dissimilarity. This is why we can no longer define it in relation to a model imposed on the copies, a model of the Same from which the copies resemblance derives. If the simulacrum still has a model, it is another model, a model of the Other (lAutre) from which there flows an internalized dissemblance. (p. 257) The simulacrum only appears as the lowest order of reality, as the unreal itself, when it is vilified within the model of the Same and the order of representation, where it is only a simulation and designates only the external and nonproductive effect of resemblance, that is, an effect obtained by ruse of subversion (ibid.). This same denigration remains operative in Badious reading of Deleuze, whereby he accuses Deleuze of reducing the multiple to unreal simulacra, explaining this in terms of the needs of a conception of univocity he manifestly misunderstands. If the simulacrum follows a model of the Other, then it in fact follows no model at all, for the Other connotes a flux and impurity inconsistent with any notion of a design or archetype. But then simulacra are never anything more than simulations of simulacra. They are not actual but unreal simulations of a virtual and real One, as Badiou suggests. Rather, At least two divergent se-

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ries are internalized in the simulacrum neither can be assigned as the original, neither as the copy (PS, p. 262) would be a far more accurate rendition of the relation between virtual and actual. The reality of simulacra follows from an inversion of substance over difference, and the elevation of a single voice by which differences are both related and disjoined. Certainly this reversal presents us with the same of the different, the one of the multiple, the resemblant of the dissimilar (DR, p. 126). But this sameness or oneness must be distinguished from another that is now reduced to a mere illusion or abstraction by a power of selection that Deleuze says is effected by the eternal return, one that ensures that Only the extreme, the excessive, returns (p. 41). We should say of this identity and this resemblance that they are simulated: they are products of systems which relate different to different by means of difference (which is why such systems are themselves simulacra). The same and the similar are fictions engendered by the eternal return. This time, there is no longer error but illusion: inevitable illusion which is the source of error, but may nevertheless be distinguished from it. (p. 126) That identity as well as the correlate forms of difference inscribed within its concept is not real, but instead has a status traditionally assigned to simulacra, is perhaps the most profound lesson in Deleuzes philosophy, with implications for politics and ethics as well as ontology. There are certainly parallels with a Platonist or Neoplatonist project that is also concerned to move beyond identity, which seeks a One or a self-differentiating One-All exceeding all representation. But such a project is not Deleuzes. To suggest otherwise is to portray Deleuze as the very sort of beautiful soul he criticizes, who believes that there are only reconcilable and federative differences, far removed from bloody struggles. The beautiful soul says: we are different, but not opposed. . . (DR, p. xx). That the univocity of being would be interpreted as a transcendence domesticating the heterogeneous would seem the natural consequence of such an error. When it is corrected, it becomes clear that univocity, far from designating the power of the One beyond representation to produce an unreal simulacrum, is rather what makes simulacra real by virtue of an unrepresentable difference. And this is precisely what makes Deleuze a thinker of both immanence and multiplicity. Notes
1. Badiou, Alain, Deleuze: The Clamor of Being, trans. Louise Burchill (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2000). Translators Preface, p. xii. Cited hereafter as DCB.

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2. Deleuze, Gilles, Difference and Repetition, trans. Paul Patton (New York and London: The Athlone Press, 1994), p. 304, quoted in Badiou, p. 11. Cited hereafter as DR. 3. The One is not here the one of identity or of number, and thought has already abdicated if it supposes that there is a single and same Being. The power of the One is much rather that beings are multiple and different, they are always produced by a disjunctive synthesis, and they themselves are disjoined and divergent, membra disjoncta (DCB, p. 24). 4. One wonders whether this Event with a capital E might not be Deleuzes Good (DCB, p. 27). 5. [I]f the only way to think a political revolution, an amorous encounter, an invention of the sciences, or a creation of art as distinct infinities . . . is by sacrificing immanence (which I do not actually believe is the case, but that is not what matters here) and the univocity of Being, then I would sacrifice them (DCB, pp. 9192). 6. Indeed, Deleuzes theme of immanent causality, worked out through Spinoza, in which effects are no less real than their causes, should be enough to dismiss this idea. See Deleuze, Gilles, Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza, trans. Martin Joughin (New York: Zone Books, 1992), pp. 169174. 7. See, for example, the reference to the chaotic interference of all the virtualities in the One (DCB, p. 71), and the description of the diagram of outside forces, which causes the disjointed objects . . . to enter into a formal composition, which rests characterized by exteriority, but now activated by its forceful seizure (p. 87). 8. See, for example, reference to the virtual as the deployment of the One in its immanent differentiation whereby it is its own process of actualization (DCB, p. 49). 9. Badiou acknowledges Deleuzes claim that there is neither one nor multiple only to declare: But, as always with Deleuze, going beyond a static (quantitative) opposition always turns out to involve the qualitative raising up of one of its terms (DCB, p. 10). 10. Todd May (Difference and Unity in Gilles Deleuze in Boundas, Constantin V. and Olkowski, Dorothea, eds., Gilles Deleuze and the Theater of Philosophy (New York and London: Routledge, 1994), pp. 3350) argues that while Deleuze opposes transcendental principles of unity he is not opposed to an underlying unity or sameness per se, and that he articulates such a unity through the concept of a surface organizing diverse singularities. Indeed, May says, Deleuze becomes incoherent at those times in which he posits differences as prior to this unitary surface, which is to say when he gives primacy to difference over identity. Rather, May contends, unity and multiplicity must be considered equiprimordial. Peter Hallward (Gilles Deleuze and the redemption from interest, Radical Philosophy, 81 (Jan/Feb, 1997), pp. 621) argues that Deleuzes philosophy is one of redemption structurally similar to St. Pauls, seeking an escape from this world to a Real beyond all representation and finitude, and understanding this Real not as a multiplicity but rather the self-differentiation of the One: Invariably, multiplicity with Deleuze is the predicate of a radical, self-differing singularity. His multiple is not the plural, but the internal consequence of univocity . . . With Deleuze, we know that everything is Real, that all inheres on the same plane. Yet the redemptive movement remains. The enabling conclusion follows necessarily: everything is Real but some things are more Real than others. Univocity guarantees the integrity of a single quantitative scale of reality, a single matrix of salvation (the more or less redeemed). In a way, this matrix is more damming, more inclusive, than Pauls dualism. Deleuzes redemptive philosophy, coupled with his ontological univocity, ensures a hierarchy of beings every bit

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11.

12.

13.

14. 15. 16.

17.

as dizzying as the vertical layering of Lights in Suhrawards cosmology (p. 18). Both May and Hallward severely distort the theme of univocity, and May in particular forces on Deleuze the spurious alternative of affirming either a co-relation of unity and difference or some sort of oxymoronic pure difference in which differences are merely indifferent to one another. The very reference of Heidegger should serve notice that this sameness is not to be understood in terms of any unity. For in Identity and Difference Heidegger conceives the sameness between thought and being proclaimed by Parmenides as a belonging together of differences that exceeds any synthesis of identity: If we think of belonging together in the customary way, the meaning of belonging is determined by the word together, that is, by its unity. In that case, to belong means as much as: to be assigned and placed into the order of a together, established in the unity of a manifold, combined into the unity of a system, mediated by the unifying center of an authoritative synthesis. . . However, belonging together can also be thought of as belonging together. This means: the together is now determined by the belonging. Of course, we must still ask here what belong means in that case, and how its peculiar together is determined only in its terms. . . Enough for now that this reference makes us note the possibility of no longer representing belonging in terms of the unity of the together, but rather of experiencing this together in terms of belonging (Heidegger, Martin, Identity and Difference, trans. Joan Stambaugh (New York, Evanston and London: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1969), p. 29). This text figures prominently in one of Deleuzes most focused and affirmative engagements with Heidegger; see DR, pp. 6466. As Aristotle says of any definition, [T]he reality of a thing is the last such predication to hold of these atoms, but these predicates must belong further than the subject predicated, even though all <of them together> will not <belong> further (Posterior Analytics, trans. Jonathan Barnes (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), II.13). But when we come to the concrete thing, e.g. this circle which is a particular individual, either sensible or intelligible. . . of these individuals there is no definition; we apprehend them by intelligence or perception; and when they have passed from the sphere of actuality it is uncertain whether they exist or not, but they are always spoken of and apprehended by the universal formula. But the matter is in itself unknowable (Aristotle, Metaphysics, 2 vols., trans. Hugh Tredennick (Cambridge, MA and London: Loeb Classics, 19331935), 7.10, pp. 361363). Metaphysics, op cit., 3.3, p. 119. See also 11.1, p. 57. Cited hereafter as MP. See Plato, The Republic, trans. GMA. Grube (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1974), 506d511. As Aristotle writes: The term being is used in various senses, but with reference to the one central idea and one definite characteristic, and not as merely a common epithet (MP, 4.2, p. 147). Aquinas, St. Thomas, Summa Theologiae: A Concise Translation, edited by Timothy McDermot (Westminster, MD: Christian Classics, 1989), 1.1.13.5, p. 32. Cited hereafter as ST. The analogy of divine attributes, however, is commonly differentiated from that of health as being a metaphysical analogy, meaning that the attributes are not intrinsically held only by one thing and then attributed to others by act of intellect alone what is termed an analogy of attribution. It also differs from a physical analogy in which several beings intrinsically share the same trait in the same manner or more, but according to different degrees of perfection, so that man and dog, for example, are both ani-

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18. 19.

20.

21.

22. 23.

mals, but one is a more perfect animal than the other. Against this standard reading of the analogy of being, see McInerny, Ralph, The Logic of Analogy: An Interpretation of St. Thomas (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1961). Now, if we ask what is the instance capable of proportioning the concept to the terms or to the subjects of which it is affirmed, it is clear that it is judgment (DR, p. 33). Aquinas accepts equivocity here as the limit to human knowledge of God, holding that reason can demonstrate Gods existence, and a set of predicates that can be analogically attributed to him, but that the divine essence remains opaque (on this point see Gildon, Etienne, The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, trans. L.K. Shook, CSB (Notre Dame: The University of Notre Dame Press, 1956), pp. 107110). However, it is unclear that this distinction can be sustained. It functions on the Thomist division between essence (ens) and existence of act-of-being (esse), whereby only the latter can be demonstrated by the rationalist arguments for the first mover. But as a result, the famous five proofs of Gods existence violate Aristotles rule that demonstrative proof requires a definition of the thing in question (that is, its essence) as a middle term in its syllogism. Aquinas maintains that Aristotles requirement is applicable only when arguing from cause to effect, not effect back to cause, where the central link is not what the cause is (since we cannot even ask what a thing is until we know that it exists) but what the name of the cause is used to mean (ST, 1.1.2.2., p. 12). To this, Duns Scotus replies: There is no point in distinguishing between a knowledge of His essence and a knowledge of His existence. . . For I never know anything to exist unless I first have some concept of that of which existence is affirmed and therefore being must be a univocal concept with sufficient unity to serve as the middle term of a syllogism (Duns Scotus, John, Philosophical Writings, trans. Allan Wolter, OFM (Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 1987), pp. 16, 20. Cited hereafter as PW). According to [Henry of Ghent], by conceiving wise we grasp a property or quasiproperty which perfects the nature after the manner of a secondary act. In order to conceive wise, therefore, it is necessary to have a conception of some prior subject, because I understand this property to be verified existentially. And so we must look beyond all our ideas of attributes or quasi-attributes, in order to find a quidditative concept to which the former may be attributed. This other concept will be a quidditative notion of God, for our quest for a quasi-subject will not cease with any other kind of concept (PW, p. 19). On the significance of these attacks being directed at Henry rather than Aquinas, see Wolter, Allan B., The Transcendentals and Their Function in the Metaphysics of Duns Scotus (New York: The Franciscan Institute, 1946), pp. 3233; Prentice, Robert P., The Basic Quidditative Metaphysics of Duns Scotus as Seen in His De Primo Principio (Antonianum, 1970), pp. 2123. Hence the Philosopher, in III Metaphysics [ch. 3, 998b 2227] does not show that being is not a genus because of any equivocation, but because it has a greater commonness and univocation than the commonness of a genus (Scotus, Lectura, I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 12, quoted in Prentice, op cit., p. 54). See Gilson, Etienne, History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages (London: Sheed & Ward, 1955), pp. 456457. Hence, all to which being is not univocal in quid are included in those to which being is univocal in this way. And so it is clear that being has a primacy of commonness in regard to the primary intelligibles, that is, to the quidditative concepts of the genera, species, individuals, and all their essential parts, and to the Uncreated Being. It has a

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24.

25.

26.

27.

28.

29.

virtual primacy in regard to the intelligible elements included in the first intelligibles, that is, in regard to the qualifying concepts of the ultimate differences and proper attributes (PW, p. 4). The criticisms of other theories and the argument for the theory of haecceity are found in Duns Scotus, John, Six Questions on Individuation from His Ordinatio, II. d. 3, part 1, qq. 16 in Spade, Vincent, editor/translator, Five Texts on the Medieval Problem of Universals (Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1994), pp. 57113. Cited hereafter as SQ. As an essence, it is still characteristic of quiddity that it can be predicated of several things: quiddity marks a thing as a thing, but does not make it this thing. See SQ, nn. 181182, pp. 104105. Every quidditative entity (whether partial or total) in some genus is of itself indifferent as a quidditative entity to this individual entity and that one, in such a way that as a quidditative entity it is naturally prior to this individual entity insofar as it is a this (SQ, n. 187, pp. 106107). In Nietzsche the essential relation of one force to another is never conceived of as a negative element in the essence. In its relation with the other the force which makes itself obeyed does not deny the other or that which it is not, it affirms its own difference and enjoys this difference (Deleuze, Gilles, Nietzsche and Philosophy, trans. Hugh Tomlinson (London: The Athlone Press, 1983), I.4, pp. 89). Deleuze, Gilles, Plato and the Simulacrum in The Logic of Sense, trans. Mark Lester with Charles Stivale, ed. Constantin V. Boundas (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), pp. 253266, p. 253. Cited hereafter as PS.l Was it not inevitable that Plato should be the first to overturn Platonism, or at least to show the direction such an overturning should take? (DR, p. 68).

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