The double, image and simulacra: Edgar Allan Poe’s "William Wilson"

• Autor(a) principal: Ferraz, Maria Cristina Franco
• Data de Publicação: 2016
• Outros Autores: Carvalho, Louise Ferreira
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: E-Compós
• Texto Completo: https://www.e-compos.org.br/e-compos/article/view/1255
• topic: Duplo; regime do simulacro; filosofia antimetafísica.

Edgar Allan Poe’s short story "William Wilson" develops the theme of the Double, also known as Doppelgänger. This article investigates the tale’s motif and its implications concerning the questions of subjectivity and image in the XIXth century. The modern obsession with the evil shadows resonates some uncertainties introduced in European thought, such as the crisis of the identity model inherited from Platonism, the human figure’s deformation, the emergence of psychoanalysis. In short, it highlights the threat of the corrosion of the self’s supposed unity. It relates this topic to Deleuze’s and Nietzsche’s anti-metaphysical perspectives on the simulacra and the mask and analyses some passages of Poe’s tale which emphasizes the “power of the false” and suspends some Platonic inheritances.