ABSTRACT
The concept of "dissimulation," as its etymology suggests, is based upon the double valence of the word simulare, which signifies to copy or reproduce an object in a seemingly faithful fashion that actually feigns, covers-up or distorts the "original" object being represented. This chapter examines the ways in which Denis Diderot's displacement of rationalist scientific paradigms had profound implications upon his alternative, non-rationalist—though certainly not irrational—and fluid formulations of gendered subjectivity. It identifies that some of J. J. Rousseau's and many of Diderot's principal works some striking continuities with the postmodern project of displacing stable sexual, and more generally socio-political, economies. The chapter discusses some of the ideological and rhetorical strategies the texts share with contemporary theoretical models like Jean-Francois Lyotard's paralogy, Derrida's supplément, and Michel Foucault's Panopticon, by analyzing the uses of the trope of dissimulation in influential French Enlightenment narratives.
