Simulacrum and the Play of Parody in the Writing of Klossowski

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French Stu£a, VoL LTV, N o. 5, 299-31 1

SIMULACRUM AND THE PLAY OF PARODY IN THE

WRITING OF PIERRE KLOSSOWSKI

IAN JAMES

AS GERARD GENETTE remarks in Palimpsestes, parody, as a literary critical term,has developed an imprecise and confused meaning. Parody, he notes, is usedvariably to designate: 'tantot la deformation ludique, tantot la transpositionburlesque d'un texte, tantot l'imitation satirique d'un style'.1 Genette's aim inPalimpsestes is to trace the specific history of the meaning of parody and thento elaborate a 'structural' definition of the term (where it becomes the'transformation non-satirique' or ludique' of a text). His rethinking ofparody within a structural typology of literature is rigorous but, like thetraditional conceptions he opposes, necessarily implies the existence of anoriginal which is parodied.

In the writing of philosophical essayist, novelist, and translator PierreKlossowski the term parody is re-figured in such a way that the notion ofauthentic origin is called into question. Parody is taken beyond Genette's

considerations of literary typology and is rethought in much broaderexistential terms. For Klossowski the movement of parody within thought,representation and language marks the loss of any possibility of origin oressence within being or things. Within this vertiginous movement of parodytraditional lines of demarcation between literary and philosophical discourseare redrawn in ways which impact greatly upon later writers and theorists. Inwhat follows the fictional and theoretical modes of Klossowski's writing willbe analysed in order show the way in which the relation between literatureand philosophy is shifted and blurred in his work. An initial consideration of

his first novel La Vocation suspendue will be followed by a discussion of aphilosophical essay TSIietzsche, le polytheisme et la parodie'. This two-stranded approach makes it clear that on one level Klossowski's view ofliterature (as well as the narrative strategies he adopts) is mediated throughan engagement with the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. However,consideration of the paradoxical logic underpinning both La Vocationsuspendue and 'Nietzsche, le polytheisme et la parodie' reveals that, ultimately,Klossowski places philosophical/theoretical meditation alongside fictionalwriting within the same vertiginous movement of parody. Rather than

allowing literature to be dominated by the concepts of theory, or theory to

1 PaBmpststes(Paris, Seuil , 1982), p . 55.

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30 0 IAN JAMES

be reduced to a mode of narrative fiction, both become, in Klossowski'sterminology, simulacra. The specificity of the term 'simulacrum' insofar as it

describes the status of both his philosophical and fictional writing will beinvestigated here.Klossowski was born in 1905 and remains perhaps one of the most

neglected French writers of the post-war period. Closely associated withGeorges Bataille from the late 1930s onwards, his literary-philosophicalworks, and in particular his commentaries on Sade and Nietzsche, haveexerted an influence on thinkers such as Maurice Blanchot, Gilles Deleuze,Michel Foucault and Jean-Francois Lyotard. He is also the author of anumber of significant novels: La Vocation suspendue, the trilogy Les Lois de

I'hospitalite, and the 1965 winner of the Trix des critiques', Le Bapbomet?Klossowski is noted for his translations of Virgil, Holderlin, Nietzsche,W ittgenstein and Heidegger. Since 1972 he has dedicated himself to pa intin gand has exhibited widely. It is perhaps as a commentator on Nietzsche,however, that Klossowski has made the greatest impact His first essay onthe German thinker appeared in 1937 in the second issue of Bataille's journalAtepbaie w hic h was en titled "Nietzsche et les fascistes'.3 Bataille, along withKlossow ski, A nd re M asson and Jean WahL, in pu blishing this issue, soug ht torescue the German philosopher's work from its hijacking by German

N ation al Socialist ideology. Klossow ski's con tribu tion consisted in the essayentitled 'Creation du monde' and also in two reviews on books aboutNietzsche, one by Karl Jaspers, the other Karl Lowith's Niet^sches Philosophicdes cwign Wiedcrkunft des Gleichen.* It is in the second of these that Klossowskifirst explicidy discusses Nietzsche's doctrine of Eternal Return (or Recur-rence), the motif which, as shall become clear, is central to his formulationof literature as 'contrefapon'. He then published two essays in the fifties, onean introduction to his 1954 translation of Die Frohlicbe Wissenscbafi? 'Sur

2 Pierre Klossowski, La Vocation sttspendne (Paris, Gallimard, 19J0); Les Lois de I'bospita&tt(Paris, Gallimard, 1965) (including: Robert a star (Paris, M inuit, 1954). La Revocation de CL^ditde Nantes (Pans, Minuit, 1959) and Le Soujflatr, on, It Tbi&trt de soctfti (Paris, Pauvert, i960)); LeBapbomet (Paris, Gallimard, 1965).

Adphale, 1 (21 January 1937).4 Nietqscbes Philosophic des ewigen Wiedtrkjmft des Oeichen, second edition (Stuttgart, Kohlhammer,

1956).Fnedrich Nietzsche, Die JrlhUcbe Wissenscbaft, in Rritiscbe Studtenausgibe, ed. by Giorgio Colli and

Mazzino M ontinari , 1 j vols (B erlin, de G ruy ter, 1967—77), vol. 3. For the French edition see Le GotSavoir, translated by P. Klossowski (Paris, Gallimard, 1956). Throughout this paper citations fromNietzsche's texts will be given in their French rather than their English translations and followed

with a reference t o the original. To avoid the proble ms posed by the very different Anglo-A mericantradition of Nietzsche translation and commentary I have preferred to address myself here to aspecifically French face of Nietzsche. Most importandy the Colli/Montinari edition organizes allthe posthumous fragments according to chronological order (superseding the work Der \PUle x* rMacht, tendentiously arranged as it was by Elisabeth Forster-Nietzsche and Heinrich Koselitz (PeterCast) (Stuttgart, Kr one r, 1959)). Also , the translators into French for the Gallimard Co lli/M ontin aricomplete works are by and large working within the same intellectual perspective from whichKlossowski is reading Nietzsche.

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P RODY IN THE WRITING OF KXOSSOWSKI 3 0 1

quelques themes fondamentaux de la "Gaya Scienza" de Nietzsche', theother a lecture given at the College de Philosophic in 1957, 'Nietzsche, lepolytheisme et la parodie'; both of these were collected in 1963 in the volumeUn sifuneste tUsir (which also contains several other essays from the previoustwo decades).6 Klossowski then wrote a number of essays based onNietzsche's later fragments which were published between 1967 and 1969and which were then collected in his full-length work, Nietzsche et le ccrclevicieux (1969).7 Finally he gave a short paper at the conference on Nietzscheat Cerisy-la-Salle in 1973, entided 'Circulus vitiosus deus '.8

This extensive body of writing makes Klossowski one of the keycommentators on Nietzsche in post-war France. His reading of die doctrine

of Eternal Return and the emphasis he places upon the motifs of repetition,parody and simulacrum exert a significant influence in particular on theinterpretations of Nietzsche by both Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault. AsDeleuze points out on a number of occasions, Klossowski's reading ofNietzsche and of Eternal Return is decisive for the critique of representationand identity which occurs in France during the post-war years. Such acritique attempts to think difference or alterity in a way which overturns theprimacy of self-identity and the sameness of the Same.9 The aim of diisdiscussion is not, however, to demonstrate Klossowski's importance to die

growth of a 'French Nietzsche ', nor, indeed, is it to suggest that Klossowski'sinterpretation of the German philosopher has a greater merit than any odier(French or otherwise). Rather, the aim here is to show the way in whichKlossowski's engagement widi die Nietzschean thought of Return collapsestraditional distinctions between the literary and die philosophical in such away that the two do not become the same as each other, nor does one assumea subordinate role to the other. Rather, bo th the literary and the philosophical

6 UnriJitntjU dtsir (Piris, G allimard, 1963), pp. 9-36 and pp . 187-128.7 Nietzsche et U emit mmux (Paris, Mercure de France, 1969). See also "Oubli et anamnese dans

l'experience de Petemel retour du m im e', in Nut^scbe, ed. by Martial Gueroult (Paris, Minuit, 1967)(this was a paper given originally at a conference on Nietzsche attended by among others Deleuzeand Foucault). *La Periode turinoise de N ietzsch e', L'£pbimire (Spring 1968), 57—85; T x Comp lot ',Change, 5(1969). 88-98.

8 In Nitt^scbe atgourd'btd (2 vols), Publications du centre culturel de Cerisy-la-Salle (Paris, UGE,•975)> 1,91— oj. This conference was a major even t in the reappraisal of Nietzsche by contem poraryFrench philosophers; other contributors included Deleuze, Lyotard, Derrida, Kofrnan, Nancy,Lecoue-Labarthe, J.-M. Rey and numerous others. For an excellent general critical account of theFrench reception of Nietzsche, see Douglas Smith, TrtmsvaluatuiRs: Nietopcbi in Frana iSp-iyp(Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1996). For a discussion of the importance of both this and the earlier

Royaumont colloquium, see in particular pp. 150—68.9 See Gilles Deleu ze, 'Conclusions: sur la volonte d e puissance et Petemel retour', in Niehpcbt, cd .by Martial Gueroult, pp. 275-86; Diffimta et ripltitiim (P aris, PU F, 1968), p. 81, note 2, p, 91 ; and(with Felix Guattari) L 'Anti-CEthpt (Paris, Minuit, 1972—73), pp . 27—28, pp . 74—75. See also M ichelFoucault, "Nietzsche, la gtnealogie, lTiistoire', in ^.ptmitbk: bommagc & Jean Hyppohtt (Paris, P UF ,1971), pp. 145—72. For a more detailed account of the relation between Klossowski and Deleuze,see Douglas Smith, T ranjvabiataiu, pp. 140-184.



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30 2 IAN JAMES

are given up to a parodic movement in which both affirm their differencefrom each other, but also, and crucially, from themselves.

One of Klossowski's earliest theoretical meditations on literature isincorporated within his first work of fiction, La Vocation suspendue, and this initself is indicative of the way in which theory and fiction have a mobile andambiguous relation to each other throughout his work. An analysis of thisnovel will allow the em ergence of the term 'simulacrum ' within Klossow ski'sw riting to b e traced and its paradoxical logic to be elucidated.

Literature as simulacrum

La Vocation suspendue is the story of a young seminarist and the crisis of faithhe undergoes before leaving the priesthood and abandoning his faith.10 A tthe same time this novel incorp orates a philosophical med itation on literatureitself, on the nature of writing and its relation to transcendent truth. One isimmediately struck on reading the first pages of La Vocation suspendue that asa novel it incorp orates w ithin itself a questioning of its own status. T he novelimmediately establishes itself as, in fact, a commentary on a novel, a novelwh ich is itself entitled La Vocation suspendue and which, the reader is in form ed,was published 'sans nom d'auteur, edite a "Bethaven, 1 9 4 .. . ' " ." W hat one is

reading, then, is not a novel by Pierre Klossowski (even though it is) but acommentary on a novel, La Vocation suspendue, whose author, publisher anddate of publication remain unknown. The uncertainties and the complexityof this mist en abyme will be analysed in more detail shortly. The theoreticalargument of the novel can be found in its opening section. Klossowski'sview of literature begins to emerge in discursive form as he launches aconcerted attack on the Sartrian conception of litterature engagee'. LaVocation suspendue is described by Klossow ski's narrator- com m entato r asbeing like any nu m ber of: ' "E ntw icklun gsro m ane " catholiques ou prote s-

tants' .12

The com me ntator then proceeds to situate this unkn ow n and unseenwork within the context of a literary debate surrou nding th e moral functionof literature and the projects of the 'Christian' and the 'atheist ' novel.Authors such as Barbey d'Aurevilly, Bloy and Bernanos are cited approvinglyas representatives of the former; the commentator clearly has Sartre andCamus in his sights as representatives of the latter. The text goes on todescribe a perhaps surprising and paradoxical situation whereby it is atheistauthors who, following their own logic, would write novels representing amoralizing world view, and Christian authors, who, following theirs, would

10 *La vocation susp endue', in Les Temps Modemu, no. 53 (March 19J0), 1 j37- 88 . All references tothis work will be to the Gallimard edition cited above. For further detailed discussion of this novelsee Marcel Spada, Futions d'Ervs (G hen t, Annales des hautes etudes de Gan d, 1970), v m , 29-36-

11 La Vocationsuspendue,p. 11.12 La Vocation nupendtic, p. 11.



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PARODY IN TH E W RIT ING OF KLOSSOWSKI 30 3

portray a world devoid of any order of morality. Atheist literature, accordingto this argum ent, affirms itself as specifically m oralizing in the way it 'cherchea etablir une morale sans Dieu'. By linking the project of literature withissues of freedom and responsibility, a writer like Sartre, Klossowski'scommentator contends, inevitably takes up a stance which is shot throughwith traditional moralism: TJn Sartre, un Camus se doivent d'etre desdirecteurs de conscience, puisqu'ils en sont a construire un decalogue qu'il yaura d 'autant plus de merite a accepter qu'il sera plus loisible de le rejeter'.14

Such a moralistic stance relies necessarily on an ultimately mimetic project(what Sartre calls in Q u 'est-ce que la littemturt? a 'presentation imaginaire dumonde en tant qu'il exige la liberte humaine'15).

Christian fiction, the commentator of La Vocation suspendueholds, performsquite the opposite function. The task of Christian literature would be topresent an immoral picture of the universe. The truth of G od's existence andthe proclamation of His greatness in all its manifestations are no t the realmof fiction which by its very nature is concerned with falsity and illusion. Inthe first instance this argument repeats the Platonic conception of fictionand literary representation.16 If the world we experience is itself a falsificationor pale shadow of the world of Ideas, then fiction, as mimesis orrepresentation of the world, is doubly false; it presents a copy of a copy and

lies at one further remove from the Truth to which only philosophicaldiscourse can gain access. In the terms of the argument elaborated here byKlossowski's narrator-commentator, it is not the place of Christian authorsto fictionalize Truth or to proclaim their writing to be God's word; ratherthey should create a fiction which would affirm God's absence (from theartificial fictional world) but which would thereby ultimately, as if byantithesis, also be an affirmation of God's presence (in the transcendentworld of Truth rather than in the fallen world of fiction). The commentatornotes with regard to Tauteur chretien': 'parce qu'il ne saurait etre un

hagiographe de saints imaginaires, et qu'il n'est rien de plus outrecuidant quede parler de la grace comme si Ton en disposait, sa tache sera de representerce que cela signifie quand on dit que la grace a ete refusee'.17 Christianliterature then, insofar as it affirms the falsity of fiction, demands the

13 La Vocation suspend* , p. 17.14 La Vocation susptndkt, p . 20-21. Sartre himself no tes: Ijien que la litterature soit une cho se et la

morale, une toute autre chose, au fond de l'imperatif esthetkjue nous discemons rimperatif moral',Qu'tst-ct que la ittfmture?, p. 69. Comments such as this dearly provide the basis for Klossowski'scritique of atheist literature in La Vocation suspendtu. It could be argued, however, that Klossowski'sresponse to Sartre is rather one-sided and fails to take into account the complex problematic ofSartre's fiction itself. See Rhiannon Goldthorpe, Sa rtre: L iteratim and Theory (Cambridge UniversityPress, 1984).

15 Qu'est-a que la littirattm?, p . 69.16 Plato, Republic, translated by H. D . P. Lee (Harm onds wo rth, Penguin, 195 5), Boo k x , 11,370-86.17 La Vocation suspendue, p . 2 0.



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30 4 IAN JAMES

portrayal of a world founded upon moral and theological absence, whichwould, in its final mom ent, imply moral and divine presence. Klossowski, inthe guise of his narrator-commentator, is keen to foreground the artifice ofart This renders the truly Christian writer — by dint of being a writer —capable only of going against God's designs and trudis because of the veryfictionality and falsity of his construct A Christian writer is a 'faux prophete 'who must know that: 'tout ce qu'il dit du royaume des Cieux n'est qu'unecontrefacon qui doit sans cesse fake appel aux appetits les plus charnels deses lecteurs'.

The conception of art and literature as 'contrefacon' grounds theopposition, implicit in this argument, to any Sartrian notion of an atheist

litterature engagee'. For Klossowski's narrator in La Vocation suspendu eliterature in general is anti-mimetic and devoid of moral purpose or logic.The writer can only be a 'faux prophete' of immorality, always at work toproduce false, counterfeit images of a world denied higher trud i, because thefalse image is die realm of fiction properly speaking. According toKlossowski, literature constitutes itself in the production of simulacra anddifferentiates itself from other modes of human creative activity, precisely byaffirming its status as such. The simulacrum articulates the essentialmovement of fictional writing (and indeed of all art). Klossowski's use of

this term describes the way in which literature, as self-conscious artifice,always affirms its own representations as false, as different from the 'realthing'. As such literature, as simulacrum, always also affirms its owninternali2ed difference from itself, its lack of self-identity. However,Klossowski's originality lies in the way in which he takes the term simulacrumand moves it beyond its original Platonic conception (where it functionssimply as a bad copy of an original).19 The simulacrum, in the Klossowskiansense, implies a movement of infinite repetition or copying in which thenotion of both original and copy are lost. In La Vocation suspendue this abyssal

movement of the simulacrum is rendered in the narrative structure itself andin a specific use oimise en abyme.

All Klossowski's fictional work deploys various narrative strategies whichmark their own self-conscious artifice and widi this a movement of internalself-distancing. His firs t novel La Vocation suspendue is set in occupied Franceand tells die (pardy autobiographical) story of a young seminarist, Jerome,whose vocation to the priesthood undergoes a number of crises andultimately fails. On the most obvious level this story of a failed vocationmarks a clear step away from the theological position Klossowski held beforeand during the War. It tells, in however indirect a way, of the failure of his

18 Ibid., pp. 21—22." For a com me ntary o n the functioning of the simulacrum in Platonic discourse, see Gilles

Deleuze, Lopque du sens (Pa ris, Minui t, 1969), pp . 292—307.



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PARODY IN THE WRITING OF KXOSSOWSKI 305

own vocation and his renu nciation of Catholic doctrine. O n a mo re complexlevel the novel itself has a narrative structure which is closely linked to thisfailure of theological perspective indicated ab ove. The narrative of this novelsets itself up as a commentary on a nove l called La Vocation suspendue. As suchLa Vocation suspendue is a commentary on a novel which bears the same nam eas itself. In the first instance the reader is left unc ertain as to whe ther he / s heis reading a novel or, in fact, is only ever reading a comm entary on a novel.This uncertainty is compounded by the implication that, since the novel LaVocation suspendue is a commentary of La Vocation suspendue, the text LaVocation suspendue, which is commented upon , is itself also a commentary.The novel would therefore be a commentary of a commentary, which byimplication would itself comment on a commentary and so on ad infini-tum. The text wou ld always be a comm entary on a text which is in fact neverencountered as such, but instead is infinitely deferred. The c o m m e n t a r y /novel recounts a story set in occupied France but at the same time itundermines itself as narrative. Th e events narrated are never present asevents but are lost in a vertiginous spin of comm entary.20 In this respect LaVocation suspendue is a text which is never identical with itself; it speaks of thetext whose title it bears but is never coincid ent w ith it.

The ambivalent narrative structure of La Vocation suspendue underpins an

uncertainty about identity in the novel as a whole. Just as the narrative isnever self-identical as narrative, so the identity of the characters described isnever fixed or easily determinable. Th e seminarist Jerom e can be identifiedwith Klossowski along with a hos t of other characters who suggest figuresfrom the milieu Klossowski inhabited during the Occupat ion. At the sametime La Vocation suspendue is a novel where a priest can also be an atheistpsychoanalyst, w here a nun can pose as a corpse for an avant-garde artist andwhere, at its climax, the atheist avant-garde artist is revealed to be a powerfuland influential priest The boundaries between characters becom e p ermeable.

One character can figure an aspect or potentiality of another whilst at diesame time they can have double or interchangeable identities. With the lossof an originary sequence of events to which the narrative might refer comesa difficulty of tying characters down to fixed or discrete subject positions.The novel refers both to a historical event (the Occupation) and a biography(Klossowski's) but it does so only very indirecdy and allusively dirough the

20 In this sense La Vocation suspendui offers a more radical version of mist en ak/mt than one finds insuch novels by Gide as Pakdes and Les Faux-Monnayturs. In both these texts the mist en abyme

articulates a movement of open-endedness and incompletion. The Paludts or Faxx-Monnajeunwithin the texts in question are never actually w ritten. La Vocation suspendae alludes to a moment ofenunciation which is never encountered as such and which is subject to an infinite deferral in itsentirety. This brings Klossowski's use of mist en abjmt close to what Lucien Dallenbach terms a'mise en abyme transcendantale' (which he analyses in relation to Beckett 's Watt) in Lt Recitspiculmrt: essai sttr la mise en abyme, (Paris, Seuil, 1977), pp. 13 3—138. Da llenbac h argues that this typeof mise en abyme points to a structure given up to 'u n decentrem ent narratif generalise', ibid, p. 137.



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30 6 IAN JAMES

infinite diversion of a commentary as it comments on an always alreadycommented text It both refers and defers in the very same gesture. As suchLa Vocation suspendue in the first instance appears to align itself with theChristian literature it alludes to in its opening pages. Like that literature, itaffirms itself as a kind of 'contrefacon' but clearly, in its wider narrativestructure and in the uncertainties which endlessly play across the text, alltheological affirmation is abandoned. The 'contrefacon' of La Vocationsuspendue no longer counterfeits the 'royaume des Cieux' but gives way to aninfinite movement of parody in which all self-identity is los t In this infinitemovem ent the novel affirms itself as simulacrum.

In its initial outline as it is presented at the beginning of La Vocationsuspendue

Klossowski's view of

literature (as

false image) appears to be

mediated, in part, through Platonic conceptions of Truth and representation.Fiction is seen as false image in relation to theological or philosophicaldiscourse which articulates a higher level of truth. In common with Sartre,Klossowski's writing tends to theorize literature through the medium ofphilosophical categories and contexts. Yet the movement of the novel itselfaffirms the 'falsity' of fiction in a much more far-reaching manner — in away which overturns the notion of Truth or origin which underpins thePlatonic argument and the initial true/false distinction that such an argumentimplies. What becomes clear, when one turns to Klossowski's commentarieson Nietzsche, is that theoretical meditation for Klossowski is caught upwithin the very same abyssal movement of parody as the fictional text LaVocation suspendue. As Klossowski draws on philosophy to theorize literatureas 'contrefacon', his argument is itself included within a literary text whichaffirms itself as parody. In a m oment of paradox, the philosophical argumentwhich founds a theoretical perspective on literature becomes subject to theineluctable play of parody it seeks to theorize. It is included within that verylogic of literature it seeks to theorize.

Eternal Return and the play ojparody

Described by Maurice Blanchot as un des plus importants ecrits surNietzsche en francais',21 Klossowski's essay 'Nietzsche, le polytheisme et laparodie' focuses on the Nietzschean doctrine of Eternal Return and derivesfrom this two motifs, those of parody and simulacrum, which take on keyimportance for Klossowski in relation to the status of both his fictional andtheoretical writing. The doctrine of Eternal Return is perhaps one of the

most elliptical and elusive moments of Nietzsche's thought and is announcedmost dearly in Also sprach Zaratbustra. As a doctrine it centres on theimperative that Zarathustra formulates in the aphorisms T)e la Redem ption'

'Le rire des dieux', in L 'AmtU (Paris, GaU imard, 1971), p. 204.



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PARODY IN TH E W RIT ING OF KLOSSOWSKI 30 7

and 'D'anciennes et de nouvelles tables' .22 Zarathustra brings together thepossibility of Vouloir' and of 'necessite', 'necessity' referring here to theirreversibility of past m om en ts o f life (which by definition take on a cha racterof necessity since one can retrospectively do nothing about them).Zarathustra speaks of the need to: 'racheter le passe de l 'homme et recreertout "cela fut", jusqu'a ce que dit le vouloir: "Mais ainsi le voulus, ainsi levoudrais " \2 3 If the past is irretrievable, the n to will it as it was is paradoxicallyto will necessity — to will that which is beyo nd will. By willing every insta ntof our existence as necessary the doctrine of Eternal Return acts as anaffirmation of amorfati. Crucially, how ever, wh at this doctr ine affirms is thathuman existence is beyond the possibility of human determination, that ithas its own necessity which always exceeds hum an vo lition or consciousness.

Klossowski begins by asserting the resolutely paradoxical status of thedoc trine of E ternal Retu rn which is, he claims, a m od e of thinkin g bou nd upwith impossibility. Nietzsche's doctrine as a doctrine represents an attemptto 'enseigner l'inenseignable'.24 Such a formulation at once suggests thefundamentally paradoxical status of this doctrine and also its profoundobscurity as a doctrine. For what, exacdy might this ' inenseignable' be? Onemight think that given its status as unteachable one simply cannot say whatmat 'unteachable' is other than that it is unteachable, giving die wholedoctrine a radier derisory status. This initial formulation is immediatelyqualified, however:

cet inenseignable, ce sont des moments oil l'existence, echappant aux delimitationsqu'apportaient les notions de ltiistoire et de morale dont decoulent ordinairement uncomportement pratique, se revele comme rendue a elle-meme sans autre but que derevenir sur elle-meme.25

This unteachable, then, is nothing less than existence itself, not as it revealsitself to humans in die familiar categories of knowledge and perception butrather existence as it is prior to, or in, the moment when it escapes thosecategories. To begin to understand what is at stake here one needs to diinkof the way in which the thought of Eternal Return exists primarily as adisplacement of any theological, metaphysical or rational apprehension ofhuman existence. For Klossowski, the doctrine of Eternal Return followsthrough a mode of thought that occurs in the wake of the NietzscheanT_)eath of G od '. A un iverse with out G od — and that, for Nietzsche, means auniverse without transcendence or a higher plane of truth — is necessarily auniverse devoid of moral, conceptual or teleological explanation.26 T he

22 Ainsi PaHtdt ZaratboHStra, t ranslated b y Maur ice d e Gan ddl ac (Paris , Gall imard, 1971), ' D e l aRed emp t i on ' , pp . 17;—80, 'D 'anc ie nnes e t de nouvelles tab les ' , pp . 24 5-6 6.

23 Ainsi ParkatZaratboustni, p . 14S, AJso spracb Zaratbustra, in Kritiscbt StudienoHsgibe, rv, 249.24 Un sifiinestt disir, p. 189.25 Ibid., p. 189.26 Ibid., p. 189.



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importance of Klossowski's reading of Nietzsche lies, precisely, in the wayhe reads the doctrine of E ternal Return as a radical apprehension of hum an

finitude. Within this perspective, any moment of human existence is

affirmedas both entirely fortuitous and at the same time, so utterly singular that itcannot be subordinated to, or determined in terms of, any principle outside,above or beyond itself. Existence is without teleological movement orrational purpose. When we consciously apprehend it in thought or language,that which is most essential to our existence (that is, its status as fortuitoussingularity) necessarily escapes our apprehension. Existence, then, is never astable substance nor a moment of presence which would link together in alinear temporality w ith other present m oments; it is only ever a repetition offortuitous instances, which in their repetition, repeat only their differenceboth from each other but crucially from themselves. This, to the scepticalreader, may indeed sound rather far-fetched both as a reading of Nietzscheand more generally as a philosophical description of reality. Yet it is importantto note that Klossowski is not entirely alone in reading Nietzsche in thisway,27 and also that such an apprehension of human existence as bothunrepresentable, without self-identity, is a key paradigm of much post-warFrench theory.28

From the outset of his discussion, however, Klossowski himself expresses

doubts as to whether he might not be charged with abusing Nietzsche'sphilosophy, by exploiting it for his own ends: Teut-etre aurais-je Pair de meservir de Nietzsche', he remarks, and writes in the expectation that: 'jen'echapperai pas au reproche, sous pretexte de montrer le sens de la parodiechez Nietzsche, de faire moi-meme de la parodie, et done de parodierNietzsche'.29 However, he is not putting in these disclaimers merely to fendoff the critics he may encounter amongst professional philosophers oracademic commentators. Rather he is emphasizing an important aspect ofhis reading of Nietzsche itself. His relationship to the Germ an philosopher's

text may be, he suggests, one of falsity or error. This is not, he stresses, amatter of his own personal whim or unavoidable incompetence but is verymuch part of the structure of what he is seeking to do with Nietzsche andmore importantly what Nietzsche does with him in the process ofinterpretation. As he puts it: 'pour autant que Ton est amene a interpreter lapensee d'un esprit que Ton cherche a comprendre et a faire comprendre, iln'en est point qui, autant que Nietzsche, amene son interprete a le parodier'.30

From the outset Klossowski suggests that there is something strange about

27 Klossowski follows Batailk's reading of Eternal Return closely here. See Georges Bataille, SitrNittyubc, in CEumicomputes, vi, 11—205 (P- 23)-

M Deleuze's argum ent in Difflma et rfpititioH is most obviously indebted to Klossowski'sformulations.

25 UnnfiiHeiteiUsir,p. 187.30 Ibid., pp. 187-88.


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PARODY IN THE WRITING OF KXOSSOWSKI 309

Nietzsche's text insofar as it necessarily forces his commentators to parodyi t

This, indeed, is very strange. Parody traditionally implies various forms ofreproduction and deformation of an original piece for satirical or debunkingpurposes. How is it possible, then, that a text will necessarily make anycommentary on it a parody, a deformation, a betrayal of its substance?Indeed, if a commentary on Nietzsche's text is always necessarily a parody,how much of the original force of this term remains? Parody as, if you like, abad copy of an original can only really have its traditional meaning in relationto a possible good copy, a possible faithful rendering of the original.Klossowski's motif of parody is of crucial importance for the way he thinksabout the relation of literature and philosophy, but this is so only insofar asparody brings the notion of origin, of an originary and authentic existenceinto question.

Existence, the doctrine of Eternal Return affirms, can never be thought ofas originary, because, as random flux and repetition, it has always withdrawnfrom thought already. Parody is, to use a by now familiar coupling, alwaysalready at play in the movement of thought. It articulates the necessary lossto thought of an originary or authentic moment of presence or self-presence.31 In the movement of parody die concept of origin becomes an

encounter widi the impossibility of thinking an originary m om ent This lossof origin, ineluctably, renders impossible the very movement of thoughtitself, since thought is only ever an infinite parody of that original instanceof self-presence which conscious thought implies.32 According to K lossow-ski, consciousness always necessarily constitutes itself in the performance ofa role. To think is to enact the fiction of a self-same self: On ne peut pas nepas se vouloir, mais on ne peut jamais vouloir autre chose qu'un role. Savoircela, c est jouer en bonne conscience. Jouer le mieux possible revient a sedissimuler'.33 Paradoxically, then, the only way to live one's existence in good

conscience is always self-consciously to dissimulate, to perform a role thatone knows to be a fiction or mask, because diat is what one is always doinganyway. In the movem ents of parody, honesty and dissimulation, authenticityand falsity cease to function in opposition to each other, and properly

31 In this respect Klossow ski's key motif of parody dearly prefigures Derrick's formulation of thetrace as la disparition de l'origine'. See Jacques Dcrrida, Dt la grammatokgu (Paris, Minuit, 1967),p. 90. Derrida, though, is suspicious of the term parody itself, arguing against Klossowski that the

parodic gesture can all too easily leave tha t whic h is parodied intact. See Niet^xbe aigoitrd'biu, 1, 111-12 .32 Klo ssow ski, like Lacan , rewrites m e Cartesian cogito: *O n n 'est jamais la ou T o n e s t , mais

tou jours la ou Ton n' est qu e l 'acteur de cet au t re q u e Ton est ' , Un afimeite disir, p . 218. La can's"L'instance de la lettre dans l'incons cient', whe re he gives his version of the cog ito, and Klossowski'sessay both appear in 19)7.

33 Un sifineste distr, p . 218.



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3 1 0 IAN JAMES

speaking they just cease to function, for there is no point of origin or self-identity upon which any of these terms can be founded.

The motif of inevitable error or dissimulation takes on key existentialsignificance. The only imperative that inevitable error imposes is that itshould always be recognized and affirmed as such in the doctrine EternalReturn. Error founds Klossowski's commentary on Nietzsche, for to readNietzsche is necessarily to parody him. According to his own doctrine ofReturn, Nietzsche has, in writing under the name Nietzsche, always alreadyparodied himself. And the doctrine of Eternal Return? That too, of course, isa parody; it thinks an existence which is beyond thought but as thought it cannever be coincident with that existence; it can only simulate and dissimulateit

The doctrine of Eternal Return is what Klossowski calls a 'simulacre dedoctrine '. The uniqueness of this doctrine in com parison to any other is itsstatus as simulacrum, simply that this doctrine of existence marks withinitself a necessary simulation or dissimulation of existence; it affirms the playof parody within itself. This simulacrum describes existence as EternalReturn but in so doing points to itself as an inevitable falsification of thatexistence it describes. As a doctrine the simulacrum of Return is a kind ofwilful error; it always affirms that it is not representing what it is representing,

it incorporates its own difference from itself within itself. The doctrine ofEternal Return asserts its status as lucid and inevitable error but in so doingit affirms existence as that which is occluded from thought and representa-tion: 'L'erreur voulue, sous la raison meme du simulacre, rend compte del'existence dont l'essence meme est la verite qui se derobe, la verite qui serefuse'.34 So this doctrine, as resolutely and self-consciously parodic, enacts aplay of parody which is always already at play, even in its very formulation asa doctrine. It articulates a movement of infinite dissimulation which iswithout beginning or end. The simulacrum is always a false image. However,

it is not a bad copy of an original form (as it is for Plato); rather, it alwaysimplies an infinite regression in which all origin is lost.By writing fiction which contains philosophical argument and philosoph-

ical arguments which affirm themselves as a kind of fiction, Klossowskiproblematizes the relation between literature and philosophy. On one level,he clearly seems to be theorizing literature from a philosophical perspectiveand thus subordinating the literary to the philosophical. Yet at the same timehe places bo th his fictional and his theoretical writing within the ineluctableplay of parody, affirming their status as simulacra. In this sense both thetheoretical/philosophical and the fictional are ultimately subsumed into abroader logic, that of wilful error. Writing is returned to an existence whichis without foundation in any instance of transcendence or originary plenitude

5 4 Ibid. p. 217.



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PARODY IN THE WRITING OF KLOSSOWSKI 3 11

of Being. Certainly Klossowski's work has all-embracing and existentialimplications which we may or may not wish to accept. His specificarticulation of the 'simulacrum' points forward to the developments ofwriters such as Jacques D errida and Paul de Man, bo th o f w ho m stress theshared basis of philosophical and literary discourse in the figural aspects oflanguage.35 I would argue here, however, the manner in which Klossowskire-situates the relation of the literary to the philosophical reaffirms thatwhich has always been the most proper attribute of literature, that is, itsimpropriety, its status as 'erreur voulue', as self- conscious artifice.

In the play of parody the writings of both Nietzsche and Klossowski areaffirmed as infinitely different from themselves as they open thought up to

the impossible thought of Return. Klossowski is far from offering atheoretical meta-discourse of the literary. His own texts (La Vocation suspendueor the essay on Nietzsche), as they theori2e Eternal Return, parody, or thesimulacrum, are themselves parody and simulacrum. The movement ofparody in Klossowski's writing knows no bounds, no origin and no goal. Sowhen Klossowski comes to represent it in his essay on Nietzsche, it hasalways, he would argue, already repre sen ted him.

D O W N I N G C O L L E G E , C A M B R I D G E

35 D e Man sums this tendency up best in Allegories of Reading, rema rking on the way in which, in thewake of Nietzsche, intuitions about the figural, rhetorical nature of thought and language haveinaugurated a critique of metaphysics: 'The key to this critique of metaphysics, which is itself arecurrent gesture throughout the history of thought, is the rhetorical model of the trope or, if oneprefers to call it that, literature', Allegories o f Reading (N ew Ha ven, Yale University Press, 1979)- DeMa n no tes th at this 'tropolog ical', figural quality of language is fundam ental to all discourse as such:"The trope is not a derived, marginal, or aberrant form oflangu age but the linguistic paradigm parexcellence. The figurative structure is not one linguistic mode among others but it characterizeslanguage as such' (Allegones of Reading, p. 105). The relationship between Klossowski's term'simulacrum' and De Man's conception of rhetoric or tropes is worth further investigation.



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Simulacrum and the Play of Parody in the Writing of Klossowski

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