Different kinds of fakery and imposture can be differentiated by means of the imaginary regimes within which a performative simulation unfolds. Engaging with Sartre's analysis of the imaginary, we will identify three such regimes, calling them the objective, the reflective, and the phantasmatic. Each of these regimes involves its own kind of image and accordingly a specific type of simulation. It is proper to the objective image to attain dissimulation of the self by replacing the real with fiction. In the reflective regime, the real is not substituted by the imaginary, but rather contaminated by it. Finally, whereas the objective and the reflective regimes operate within the sphere of intentional (dis)simulation, the phantasmatic image carries us beyond Sartre's findings, as it shapes the very structure of pre-reflective disclosedness which provides the background for our projects.
Elad Magomedov is a PhD student at the Institute of Philosophy (KU Leuven, Belgium) and co-founder of www.fakematters.eu, an online platform for philosophical research on imposture and all things related to the phenomenon of fake. His research pertains to the problem of simulation and dissimulation in Sartre and Deleuze, with special interest in the relation between imagination and simulation. He is also interested in theoretical approaches to life in terms of force, propulsion, and striving. Email: elad.magomedov@kuleuven.be