How Does One Escape One's Own Simulacrum?: Subjectivity and the Asceticism of Being in Terenci Moix's Autobiography

This article draws on the early work by Gilles Deleuze in order to elucidate some key aspects relating to the representation of subjectivity in Terenci Moix’s three-volume autobiography El peso de la paja. It starts by looking at Deleuze’s notion of the subject as a “simulacrum” of Being and as a mere “impersonal consciousness” (Jean Khalfa). Drawing on Alain Badiou’s and Slavoj _i_ek’s respective readings of Deleuze, it analyzes the philosopher’s notion of thought as an “ascetic” process whereby the individual is “transfixed” by the “impersonal exteriority” that is also considered to be his or her most authentic being. Against this theoretical background, the article then turns to Moix in order to interpret the author’s renunciation of love in favor of literature at the end of his own personal apprenticeship—among other aspects of his autobiography— as a turn toward a domain of virtual transcendence, one which leads Moix to attain “intellectual beatitude” conceived as “the enjoyment of the Impersonal.”