text: In modern English clinamen is defined as an inclination or a bias. The OED gives its first recorded use in English by Jonathan Swift in his 1704 Tale of a Tub ix.166, satirizing the atomistic theory of Epicurus:
  The term was taken up by Harold Bloom to describe the inclinations of writers to "swerve" from the influence of their predecessors; it is the first of his "Ratios of Revision" as described in The Anxiety of Influence.
  In Difference and Repetition, Gilles Deleuze employs the term in his description of "multiplicities".  In addition, other French writers such as Simone de Beauvoir, Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida, Jean-Luc Nancy,  Alain Badiou, Louis Althusser, and Michel Serres have made extensive use of the word clinamen in their writings, albeit with very different meanings.
  Lucretius concept is central to the book The Swerve: How the World Became Modern', written by Stephen Greenblatt.
  "Clinamen" is defined by Alfred Jarry in Chapter 33 of his Exploits and Opinions of Dr. Faustroll, Pataphysician.  The notion later figured in the imaginary science of the Jarry-inspired College of Pataphysics, notably in the pataphysical calendar and the experimental literature of OuLiPo. The clinamen figures as a motif in the artistic practice of Rodney Graham – who has said it informs his work in general.
  Clinamen is also a term used in systems theory applied to biology.