What is Klossowski's conception of the relation between impulse, phantasm and simulacra?

Question

Presently reading Pierre Klossowski's Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle, and help in clarifying the following would be greatly appreciated

The translator's introduction notes

(4) Phantasme (‘phantasm’) and simulacrum (‘simulacrum’) are perhaps the most important terms in Klossowski’s vocabulary. The former comes from the Greek phantasia (appearance, imagination), and was taken up in a more technical sense in psychoanalytic theory; the latter comes from the Latin simulare (to copy, represent, feign), and during the late Roman empire referred to the statues of the gods that lined the entrance to a city. In Klossowski, the term ‘phantasm’ refers to an obsessional image produced instinctively from the life of the impulses. ‘My true themes’, writes Klossowski [xi] of himself, ‘are dictated by one or more obsessional (or “obsidianal”) instincts that seek to express themselves.'20 A ‘simulacrum’, by contrast, is a willed reproduction of a phantasm (in a literary, pictorial, or plastic form) that simulates this invisible agitation of the soul. ‘The simulacrum, in its imitative sense, is the actualization of something in itself incommunicable and nonrepresentable: the phantasm in its obsessional constraint.’21 If Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle is primarily an interpretation of Nietzsche’s physiognomy, it is because it attempts to identify the impulses or powers that exercised their constraint on Nietzsche (notably those associated with his valetudinary states), the phantasms they produced (notably the phantasm of the Eternal Return that Nietzsche experienced at Sils-Maria in August 1881), and the various simulacra Nietzsche created to express them. (p. x-xi)

This if unproblematic, however at p.133 he says

In order to exercise its constraint, the simulacrum must corrospond to the neccesity of the phantasm. If the impulse already 'interprets' something for itself, the phantasm remains unintelligible, below the level of consciousness: it is merely the intellect's ossified incomprehension of a state of life.

I'm finding it hard to reconcile this with the above definition. What does it mean for an impulse itself to be capable of interpretation? The use of quotation marks implies he is using 'interpretation' in a different sense to the other times he employs the term, yet it is not made clear exactly how it differs. To me this amounts to a departure from the assumed relation between impulse, phantasm and simulacrum used prior to this particular passage. The 'life of the impulses' is something I prior to encountering this viewed as being similar to Freud's description of the economy of libidinal/instinctual drives which comprise the id, meaning impulses themselves would enterpret nothing, yet this quote clearly shows this isn't the case, meaning this is not the correct characterisation.

Can anyone shed any light on this, or recommend a secondary source with a clear explanation of Klossowski's conception of these three notions?

Answer 1

I realize this is a very specific question, however perseverance with the book has yielded what i see to be a sufficient explanation .. so for any interested people:

"What does it mean for an impulse itself to be capable of interpretation?"

p.218:

First, it is our needs that interpret the world: every impulse, as a need to dominate, has its own perspective that it constantly imposes on other impulses. Second, given this plurality of perspectives, it not only follows that everything is an interpretation, but that the subject that interprets is itself an interpretation. Third, the intelligibility of everything that can only be thought (since we can form no thought that is not constrained by the rules of institutional language) is derived from the gregarious morality of truthfulness - and in this sense the principle of truthfulness itself implies gregariousness. [the notion of gregariousness is a central feature of the book, and designates a mode of being which is contrary to the will to power. Gregariousness seeks conservation, whereas the will to power, as a force inherent in all things, is characterized by an endless pushing of things beyond their current mode of being .. 'institutional language' and truth according to the book are both gregarious phenomena] "'You shall be knowable, express yourself by clear and constant signs - otherwise you are dangerous; and if you are evil, your ability to dissimulate is the worst thing for the herd. We despise the secret and the unrecognizable. - Consequently you must consider yourself knowable, you may not be concealed from yourself, you may not believe that you change." Thus: the demand for truthfulness presupposes the knowability and stability of the person.' [quote from Nietzsche]

([] added by me for clarity)

So 'the life of the impulses' differs from Freud's id because of its embeddedness within what could be called the strong version of Nietzsche's perspectivism - everything is interpretation .. thus within the phrase in question above:

If the impulse already 'interprets' something for itself, the phantasm remains unintelligible, below the level of consciousness: it is merely the intellect's ossified incomprehension of a state of life.

this is not stating that sometimes impulses interpret things, sometimes they don't, it is stating that 'if this is the case, [that impulses are always already an interpretation], then the phantasm is unintelligible. Klossowski believes all phantasms are unintelligible - they are singular, and never fully amenable to the coordinates of everyday meaning, hence

A ‘simulacrum’, by contrast, is a willed reproduction of a phantasm (in a literary, pictorial, or plastic form) that simulates this invisible agitation of the soul. ‘The simulacrum, in its imitative sense, is the actualization of something in itself incommunicable and nonrepresentable: the phantasm in its obsessional constraint.’