Appropriation in Deleuze's Philosophy: An Essay on Deleuze's Anti-Platonism and its Relation with Modern Art

This paper would attempt to illustrate some possible links between Deleuze's way of thinking and the practice of modern and post-modern artists. This analogy is defined and explained in the context of Deleuze's anti-Platonism to see if there is a relation between Deleuze's struggle to oppose anti-Platonism, his desire to create a new way of thinking, and what modern artists actually did in their practice. Hence, after defining some of the concepts and showing the importance and function of them in modern art, the paper would try to trace the same concepts in Deleuze's thought. It will then explain Deleuze's anti-Platonism putting emphasis on the concept of simulacrum; meanwhile, it will briefly answer Badiou's critique of Deleuze's anti-Platonism. Finally, it would show that Deleuze, relying on this opposition, and in fact inspired by intellectual processes used by post-modern artists, is trying to find a third way for thinking to a world full of images. He introduces a path that neither goes back and nor, as we find with Baudrillard, sees the world as an apocalyptic world of images in which we wander.