Dan Smith - Klossowskis reading of Nietzsche: Impulses, Phantasms, Simulacra, Stereotypes

A/V# 2010 Spring In his groundbreaking study of Nietzsche, Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle, Pierre Klossowski makes use of various concepts—such as intensities, phantasms, simulacra and stereotypes, resemblance and dissemblance, gregariousness and singularity—that have no place in Nietzsche’s own oeuvre. These concepts are Klossowski’s own creations, his own contributions to philosophical thought. Reading Klossowski as a conceptual innovator, has the advantage of allowing us to chart a consistent trajectory through Klossowski’s difficult and often labyrinthine text, without denying its other dimensions (affective, perceptive, literary, and so on). This paper examines three of Klossowski’s most characteristic and important concepts—impulses and their intensities, phantasms, and simulacra and their stereotypes—as well as the precise interrelations he establishes among them. Taken together, these three concepts describe what Klossowski terms t