Deleuze adopts Nietzsche's manifesto for an overturning of Platonism. However, the consensus view is that Deleuze's project is best understood as a revision not a repudiation of Platonism. Deleuze's engagement with Platonism centres on The Sophist. Out of Plato's concept of phantasm, Deleuze fashions a new concept: simulacrum. In Difference and Repetition, simulacra are invited to rise and affirm their rights; and yet Deleuze later abandons the concept entirely. Why? Although suitable for the purposes of critique, it became otiose in (...) wider applications. More generally, and against the consensus view, I argue that the trajectory of the concept of the simulacrum is emblematic of Deleuze's anti-Platonism. (shrink)