THE WRENCHING DUALITY OF AESTHETICS

From a certain point of view, it appears to be quite possible to characterize every aspect of Deleuze’s work as aesthetics or as in some manner grounded in aesthetics. This possibility arises as a function of the “wrenching duality” characterizing aesthetics, which Deleuze cites in The Logic of Sense (LS 260). This characterization arises in a discussion of the Platonic distinction between well-founded copies that resemble the Idea and copies called simulacra, which exist as a perversion of or deviation from the Platonic notion of the Idea (LS 256–58). What is significant in this account is the claim that Platonism founds the philosophical domain of representation realized through copies-icons that are understood to be the product of an intrinsic relation to the model that serves as their foundation (LS 257). We may venture to say, then, that Deleuze is interested in this intrinsic relation and in the distinction between representations or true copies and simulacra, which are distorted or false copies. As we will see, the distortion of figuration pushed by the simulacra will be central to Deleuze’s aesthetic thinking. It is, he says, the critical edge of modernity, destroying both models and their true copies (representations) in order to institute the creative chaos (LS 264, 266).

The development of this theme and of the structure supporting it appears to have continued throughout Deleuze’s work, thus its introduction sets the stage for Deleuze’s notion of philosophy in general. Referring to the wrenching duality, Deleuze states that aesthetics designates, first, a theory of sensibility, insofar as sensibility is assumed to be the form of any possible experience. As the form of any possible experience, aesthetics is clearly situated as an aspect of thought. As a form, it will be a calculus, a formal structure of well-defined rules that make the system governing experience consistent, so that it is not subject to interpretation.