Critical Affinities : Reflections on the Connections Between Nietzsche and African American Thought

289 Pages·2006·0.94 MB·English

by  Franklin

Critical
nietzsche African
and
American Thought
Affi nities
Edited by
Jacqueline Scott A. Todd Franklin
and
Robert Gooding-Williams
Foreword by
Critical Affinities
SUNY series, Philosophy and Race
Robert Bernasconi and
T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting, editors
Critical Affinities
Nietzsche and African American Thought
EDITED BY
Jacqueline Scott
and
A.Todd Franklin
FOREWORD BY
Robert Gooding-Williams
State University of New York Press
Published by
State University of New York Press
© 2006 State University of New York
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Critical affinities :Nietzsche and African American thought / edited by Jacqueline
Scott and A.Todd Franklin ;foreword by Robert Gooding-Williams.
p. cm.— (SUNY series,philisophy and race)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13:978-0-7914-6861-6 (hardcover :alk.paper)
ISBN-10:0-7914-6861-5 (hardcover :alk.paper)
ISBN-13:978-0-7914-6862-3 (pbk.:alk.paper)
ISBN-10:0-7914-6862-3 (pbk.:alk.paper)
1.Nietzsche,Friedrich Wilhelm,1844–1900. 2.African Americans—Intellectual
life. 3. Race relations—United States. 4. Racism—United States. I. Scott,
Jacqueline. II.Franklin,A.Todd,1968– III.Series.
B3317.C685 2006
193—dc22
2005029978
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Foreword
Robert Gooding-Williams vii
Acknowledgments xix
Note on Abbreviations xxi
Introduction:The Art of the Cultural Physician 1
Part I: Diagnoses
1.Kindred Spirits:Nietzsche and Locke as Progenitors
of Axiological Liberation
A.Todd Franklin 17
2.Nietzsche,Ressentiment,Lynching
John Pittman 33
3.Double Consciousness and Second Sight
Kathleen Marie Higgins 51
4.Of Tragedy and the Blues in an Age of Decadence:
Thoughts on Nietzsche and African America
Lewis R.Gordon 75
Part II: Prescriptions
5.Ecce Negro:How To Become a Race Theorist
Paul C.Taylor 101
v
vi Contents
6.Nietzsche’s Proto-Phenomenological Approach
to the Theoretical Problem of Race
Daniel W.Conway 125
7.The Price of the Ticket:A Genealogy and
Revaluation of Race
Jacqueline Scott 149
Part III: Regimens of Recovery
8.Unlikely Illuminations:Nietzsche and Frederick Douglass
on Power,Struggle,and the Aisthesisof Freedom
Christa Davis Acampora 175
9.Masculinity and Existential Freedom:
Wright,Ellison,Morrison,and Nietzsche
Cynthia Willett 203
10.Why Nietzsche (Sometimes) Can’t Sing the Blues,
or Davis,Nietzsche,and the Social Embeddedness
of Aesthetic Judgments
James Winchester 225
List of Contributors 247
Index 251
Foreword:
Supposing Nietzsche to Be Black—
What Then?
ROBERT GOODING-WILLIAMS
The chapters here mark the advent of a new,new Nietzsche,a
convergence of recurrence and singularity.They present not a German
Nietzsche,a French Nietzsche,or an Anglo-American Nietzsche,but an
African American Nietzsche,a black Nietzsche.Supposing Nietzsche
to be black—what then? To suppose Nietzsche to be black is to suppose,
with the editors of this anthology,that he may be interpretedwith an eye
to the typical concerns of African American thought;or,more generally,
the typical concerns of black studies. If Nietzsche becomes French
when read in the perspective of poststructuralism,orAnglo-American
when read in the perspective of contemporary analyticphilosophy,then
he becomes black when read in the perspective of black studies.1
Consider too that these chapters complicate and perhaps disrupt
common notions of the discursive options available to black studies.
Rather than promote an Afrocentric,diasporic,queer,or feminist black
studies (and here I make no judgment as to the comparative merits
of these now-familiar approaches to the discipline),they tacitly envi-
sion a black studies charmed and unsettled by a seducer (ein Versucher),
by Nietzsche—a black studies richer in itself, newer to itself than
before,full of new will and currents,full of new dissatisfactions.2 In
Jacqueline Scott’s and A.Todd Franklin’s enticing volume of Nietzsche
scholarship,a black new Nietzsche inspires new thoughts about black
thought and black studies.
But we should not proceed too hastily.While new and still-newer
Nietzsches continue to thrive,spectres of older Nietzsches remain,
vii
viii Robert Gooding-Williams
one of which is Nietzsche, the philosopher of aristocratic radicalism,
likewise the brutally scathing critic of socialism,feminism,and liberal-
ism—indeed,of all forms of modern egalitarianism.This,for example,
is the figure Georg Lukács described when he wrote that Nietzsche’s
“whole life’s work was a continuous polemic against Marxism and
socialism.”3Similarly,it is the figure William Preston evokes when,with
hyperbole to match Lukács,he very recently insiststhat “Nietzsche’swhole
philosophy—and not just his view of blacks—is racist.”4Preston’sracially
inflected revival of an older Nietzsche merits attention here,forit suggests
that Nietzsche has precious little to offer African Americanthought,and
that to hold otherwise,as do the editors of this collection,is absurd.
In a chapter meant for an anthology devoted to black existen-
tialism, Preston asks “Can Nietzsche help black existentialists find
answers to their own questions?”5 “No” is Preston’s clear response
to this question, but a careful reading of his argument urges a still
stronger conclusion: namely, that progressive philosophers given to
a serious engagement with issues like white supremacy,colonialism,
black politics, and black identity, whether or not they are existen-
tialists,and whether or not they are black,have no use for Nietzsche.
Preston tends toward this conclusion when he claims that Nietzsche
saw suffering blacks as laboratory animals whom he wanted “to make
...suffer more.”6 In effect,Preston argues that black and other pro-
gressives have no use for Nietzsche,because Nietzsche was a “cruel
racist”and a forward-looking,trans-European “man of the Right.”7
Supposing Nietzsche to be black—what then? Specifically,what
then can be said to support this philosophical gambit,this supposing,
faced with considerations like the ones that Preston adduces? In the
remainder of this foreword to Critical Affinities,I offer some answers
to this question,giving the central thrust of Preston’s argument its
due and scouting a few of the topoi where, perhaps, the new, new
Nietzsche may be found. I explore these topoi under the rubrics of
two broad headings, each of which indicates some fruitful points of
departure for African American thought that is tempted to consociate
with Nietzsche. These are (1) Nietzsche, colonialist fantasy, and
anti-racism,and (2) Nietzsche and German nationalism.
Nietzsche,Colonialist Fantasy,and Anti-Racism
In his excellent essay on Nietzsche and colonialism,Robert Holub
remarks that events heralding Germany’s emergence as a colonial
Foreword ix
power (Germany began to acquire colonies in Africa and the Pacific
in 1884) “reached their height during the years that Nietzsche was
composing his major works.”8 Holub also reminds his readers that
Nietzsche became personally involved with colonialism through the
adventures of his sister and brother-in-law,Elisabeth and Bernhard
Förster,founders of the Paraguayan colony of Nueva Germania.Finally,
and most important for my purposes,Holub recognizes that this per-
sonal involvement has “a philosophical counterpart in [Nietzsche’s]
writings.”9 More exactly, he acknowledges that Nietzsche’s philoso-
phical imagination becomes a colonialist imagination when it conjures
the images of the “good European”and a “great politics”to envision
a caste of “new philosophers”that would rule Europe and subjugate
the entire earth.10 A critic of the sort of nationalism the Försters
embraced,Nietzsche endorsed a supranationalist imperialism:
Nietzsche’s untimeliness . . . involves his unusual way of
approaching the problems posed by foreign affairs and world
politics.Eschewing the nationalist,mercantile,and utopian/
idealist approach to colonization, he developed . . . a con-
ceptual framework that entailed a geopolitical perspective.
In the “good European” he found a term for a future elite
that could overcome the nation-state,create a superior cultural
life,and achieve domination of the world.With “great politics”
he offered an alternative to parliamentary life and actual
colonial fantasies, as well as a vague blueprint for global
conquest on a grand scale.11
Holub’s description of Nietzsche’s geopolitics helps put Preston’s
remarks into perspective. Thus, when Preston describes Nietzsche
as a forward-looking,trans-European “man of the Right,”he alludes
to Nietzsche’s colonialist fantasy of a future, European elite that
would dominate the world beyond Europe.When he describes Nietzsche
as a racist,he reminds us that this fantasy is,in part,the fantasy of
a black Africa subjected to European rule,and that Nietzsche’s anti-
black racism (evident, for example, in his suggestion that the black
race is less intelligent than the white race12),in tandem with his enthu-
siasmfor breeding higher human beings,suggests that he imagined
an “imperialism of the future”as involving the domination of racially
inferior black Africans by racially superior white Europeans.In short,
Preston exposes the white supremacist connotations of Nietzsche’s
colonialist imagination.
Let us assume that some of Nietzsche’s writings express racialized
colonialist fantasies.Does it follow from this assumption that black