Phantasm

In Pierre Klossowski's *Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle*, the phantasm (phantasme) is "an obsessional image produced instinctively from the life of the impulses" (Translator's Preface §4) — an involuntary formation that arises from the combat of impulsive intensities and remains, in itself, unintelligible and below the level of consciousness. It is the counterpart to the simulacrum: where the simulacrum is the willed reproduction of a phantasm (in art, writing, gesture), the phantasm itself is non-willed, "the intellect's ossified incomprehension of a state of life" (Ch. 6). Klossowski takes the term from the Greek phantasia (appearance, imagination) and its more technical psychoanalytic use, but gives it a specifically impulsive sense: "Nothing exists apart from impulses that are essentially generative of phantasms" (Ch. 6). The phantasm is what the semiotic-of-impulses produces before it is captured by the code of everyday signs.

Key Points

• The phantasm is involuntary: "My true themes are dictated by one or more obsessional (or 'obsidianal') instincts that seek to express themselves" (Klossowski, quoted Pref. §4). It is produced "instinctively," not chosen.
• It is unintelligible in itself: "the phantasm remains unintelligible, below the level of consciousness: it is merely the intellect's ossified incomprehension of a state of life" (Ch. 6). The intellect "deforms what the phantasm wants to 'say'."
• It is without preconditions: "What for the intellect is a function of continuity – from cause to effect – is for the phantasm something without any preconditions: a gesture, an action, an event of which the phantasm is the residue" (Ch. 6). It is not a representation of a prior reality.
• Only art can say what a phantasm "wills": "art essentially reconstitutes in its own figures the conditions that have constituted the phantasm, namely, the intensities of the impulses" (Ch. 6) — this reconstitution is the simulacrum.
• Chaos itself is "already a phantasm": "a term that simulates the most distant of domains, and therefore the supreme authority which every phantasm born in the closest region... would appeal to" (Ch. 6). Even the limit-concept of the impulses is a phantasm.
• The Eternal Return is Nietzsche's central phantasm: the Sils-Maria experience was "a lived fact, and as a thought... a sudden thought. Phantasm or not, the experience... exercised its constraint as an ineluctable necessity" (Ch. 3).

Details

The phantasm and the reality principle

The phantasm appears "unintelligible" not because of moral censorship but because of "its coincidence with the reality principle" (Ch. 6). To suspend the reality principle is to license the phantasm's expression: the simulacrum is "a ludic suspension of the reality principle," "the licence that the [intellect] concedes to art." The imposter-philosopher's project is to extend this licence "in every domain of thought and existence," abolishing the principle of (so-called) reality by drawing "the final consequences of 'physiology'."

The phantasm as residue of impulsive combat

Because the phantasm has "the value of a gesture, an action, an event already accomplished or yet to come," it is the trace of a configuration of impulsive forces rather than the depiction of an object. In the semiotic-of-impulses, "whence come images: representations of what has taken place or what could have taken place – thus a phantasm" (Ch. 2). The phantasm is produced "from the relation between impulsive forces of varying intensity, which makes a discharge necessary."

Phantasm and the failure-condition of creation

Klossowski makes a striking remark about the phantasm's relation to lived failure: "The phantasm was produced only as the result of a failure. A positive experience ran counter to the phantasm that conditioned [a creative] organization" (Ch. 9). For natures organized around the phantasm (the "mad" who "chose their alienated states as stereotypes"), creation is not compensation for a happy life but the expression, at "the willed moment," of phantasms captured in art.

Connections

• is reproduced by simulacrum — the willed/involuntary pair is the core distinction of Klossowski's aesthetics
• is produced by semiotic-of-impulses — the phantasm is what the impulses generate before the code of everyday signs captures it
• is constituted by the intensities of tonality-of-the-soul — art reconstitutes "the intensities of the impulses" that made the phantasm
• Nietzsche's central phantasm is eternal-recurrence — the Sils-Maria revelation, "phantasm or not," exercised its constraint as necessity
• requires the-agent-suppot — the phantasm becomes a transmissible "idea" only by borrowing the intellect (the agent's repulsion)
• contrasts with the psychoanalytic fantasy — Klossowski's phantasm is impulsive-intensive, not primarily wish-fulfilling or representational

Open Questions

• How far does Klossowski's phantasm overlap with the psychoanalytic Phantasie / fantasy? The Preface notes the psychoanalytic borrowing but Klossowski's sense is impulsive-intensive rather than scenic/wish-structured.
• Is "Chaos is already a phantasm" a regress (every limit-term is itself a phantasm) or a deliberate refusal of any non-phantasmic ground? The page reads it as the latter.

Sources

• klossowski-1969-nietzsche-vicious-circle — Translator's Preface §4 (definition); Ch. 2 (phantasm as image born of impulsive forces); Ch. 3 (the Eternal Return as phantasm/lived fact); Ch. 6 (the phantasm's unintelligibility, its reconstitution by art, Chaos as phantasm); Ch. 9 (the phantasm as residue of failure)