Dead letters to Nietzsche : or, The necromantic art of reading philosophy

221 Pages·2010·0.854 MB·English

by  Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, Faulkner, Joanne, Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm

dead letters
to nietzsche,
or the
necromantic
Art of
reading
philosophy
JOANNE FAULKNER
Dead Letters to Nietzsche;
or, the Necromantic Art of Reading Philosophy
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S e R i e S i N C o N t i N e N tA L t h o u g h t
editorial Board
Ted Toadvine, Chairman, University of Oregon
Elizabeth A. Behnke, Study Project in Phenomenology of the Body
David Carr, Emory University
James Dodd, New School University
Lester Embree, Florida Atlantic University
José Huertas-Jourda, Wilfrid Laurier University†
Joseph J. Kockelmans, Pennsylvania State University
William R. McKenna, Miami University
Algis Mickunas, Ohio University
J. N. Mohanty, Temple University
Dermot Moran, University College Dublin
Thomas Nenon, University of Memphis
Rosemary Rizo-Patron de Lerner, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Lima
Thomas M. Seebohm, Johannes Gutenberg Universität, Mainz
Gail Soffer, Rome, Italy
Elizabeth Ströker, Universität Köln†
Nicolas de Warren, Wellesley College
Richard M. Zaner, Vanderbilt University
international Advisory Board
Suzanne Bachelard, Université de Paris†
Rudolf Boehm, Rijksuniversiteit Gent
Albert Borgmann, University of Montana
Amedeo Giorgi, Saybrook Institute
Richard Grathoff, Universität Bielefeld
Samuel Ijsseling, Husserl-Archief te Leuven
Alphonso Lingis, Pennsylvania State University
Werner Marx, Albert-Ludwigs Universität, Freiburg†
David Rasmussen, Boston College
John Sallis, Boston College
John Scanlon, Duquesne University
Hugh J. Silverman, State University of New York, Stony Brook
Carlo Sini, Università di Milano
Jacques Taminiaux, Louvain-la-Neuve
D. Lawrence Wieder†
Dallas Willard, University of Southern California
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Dead Letters to Nietzsche;
or, the Necromantic Art of
Reading Philosophy
..................................
Joanne Faulkner
ohio university Press athens
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Faulkner, Joanne.
Dead letters to Nietzsche, or, The necromantic art of reading philosophy /
Joanne Faulkner.
p. cm. — (Series in continental thought ; 38)
“Earlier versions of some of the material in this book have been published
in the form of articles”—Acknowledgments.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8214-1913-7 (hc : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8214-4329-3
(electronic)
1. Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844-1900. 2. Subjectivity. I. Title.
II. Title: Dead letters to Nietzsche. III. Title: Necromantic art of reading
philosophy.
B3317.F337 2010
193—dc22
2009053611
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C o N t e N t S
...................................
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction: The Quickened and the Dead 1
1 Ontology for Philologists: Nietzsche, Body, Subject 11
“Be Your Self!”: Nietzsche as Educator 12
The Life of Thought: Nietzsche’s Truth Perspectivism
and the Will to Power 15
Of Slaves and Masters: the Birth of Good and Evil 23
Moments of Excess: the Making and Unmaking of the Subject 30
2 Lacan, Desire, and the Originating Function of Loss 35
The Word that Sees Me: The Nexus of Image and Sign 37
The Nothing as the Reverse Side of Lacan’s Mirror 43
Nietzsche Is Dead, Long Live Nietzsche:
In Memory of Paternal Ghosts 57
3 “The Insiders”: Nietzsche’s Secret Teaching
and the Invention of “the Philosopher of the Future” 61
Finding One’s Home in the Nothingness of Nietzsche’s Text 64
Nietzsche’s Excessive Demand and the Question
of the Adulterous Queen’s Desire 69
High and Low: the Hierarchical Structure of Nietzsche’s Texts 77
Inside and Outside: Nietzsche “Incorporated”; or, Who Incorporates
Whom in the Act of Reading Nietzsche? 85
The Father’s Indulgence of the Prodigal Son:
Ambiguity and the Limits of “the Position” 90
4 The Contagion of Affect in Nietzsche: Klein, Krell, Bataille 95
Doing Time with Melanie Klein: Renouncing “the Bad Breast,”
Mourning the Loss of “the Good Breast” 96
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vi Contents
“Motivating this Writing . . . Is a Fear of Going Crazy”:
How Klein Might Read Georges Bataille Sur Nietzsche 103
David Farrell Krell’s “Novel” Approach to Reading Nietzsche 111
5 Family Romances and Textual Encounters:
Sarah Kofman Reading Nietzsche 124
Reading Nietzsche I: Explosions 127
Autobiography and Autothanography:
Killing with Words in Rue Ordener, Rue Labat 131
Reading Nietzsche II: Le Mépris des Juifs—
Nietzsche, Les Juifs, L’Anti-Semitisme 141
6 The Vision, the Riddle, and the Vicious Circle:
Pierre Klossowski’s Reading of Nietzsche’s Sick Body 149
On the Continuity and Disjunction between
the Body and Language 151
Exquisite Delirium: The Thought of Eternal Return 156
The Conspiracy of Philosopher–Villains:
Nietzsche–Klossowski–Sade 168
From Cannibalism to Voodoo: The Creation and Control
of the Subject of Nietzsche’s Writing 176
Notes 187
Bibliography 200
Index 207
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A C k N o w L e D g m e N t S
...................................
Earlier versions of some of the material in this book have been published in
the form of articles, and I gratefully acknowledge the assistance I received
from the journal editors and anonymous readers who contributed to the
improvement of this work, through their advice and commentary. The
articles in question are: “‘Keeping It in the Family’: Sarah Kofman Reading
Nietzsche as a Jewish Woman,” Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy
23[1] (January–March 2008): 41–64; “The Vision, the Riddle, and the Vicious
Circle: Pierre Klossowski Reading Nietzsche’s Sick Body through Sade’s Per-
version,” Textual Practice 21[1] (March 2007): 43–69 (at www.informaworld
.com); “The Body as Text in the Writings of Nietzsche and Freud,” Minerva
7 (November 2003): 94–124.
I would also like to acknowledge the Institute for Advanced Study at La
Trobe University, Melbourne, for their Postgraduate Writing-up Award,
which I received in 2006 to support the development of my book proposal;
and the Killam Trust for awarding me the Izaak Walton Killam Postdoctoral
Fellowship at the University of Alberta, which supported the writing up of
the manuscript.
I wish to extend my heartfelt gratitude to my doctoral supervisor, Philipa
Rothfield, whose thoughtful engagement with my ideas, pastoral support,
rigorous interrogations, and continuing friendship have sustained this proj-
ect. I am indebted to George Vassilocopoulos for reading and commenting
on an early draft of the entire manuscript, and Matthew Sharpe and Ashley
Woodward for their valuable feedback on drafts of chapters. Thanks also
to David McNeill for allowing me to access some of his unpublished writ-
ing, and for provoking a revision of my thinking about the relation between
“master” and “slave” morality in Nietzsche’s work; and to Daniel Smith, for
providing me with an advance copy of his Diacritics article, and prior to that
with speaking notes for a paper he delivered in Sydney in 1998, which were
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viii ACknowledgments
invaluable to me while working through Klossowski’s somatic vocabulary.
Thank you to the postgraduate community in Philosophy and Gender, Sexu-
ality and Diversity Studies, at La Trobe University, to whom versions of chap-
ters were presented as papers for their colloquia. I am also grateful to Daniel
Conway, Rosalyn Diprose, and David Pettigrew for their generous support of
this work in doctoral-thesis form, as its examiners, and later as mentors.
Finally, I would like to thank my husband, best friend, and tireless reader
and supporter of my work, Peter Chen, without whose love, forbearance, and
dependable parenting to our children, this book would not have seen its way
to completion.
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iNtRoDuCtioN
...................................
the QuiCkened And the deAd
Are our most violent poltergeists
Books?
gnashing their shelves
smashing things in the dark
they leave a greenish tombish
smell on our reading fingers
they make us musty
and bereft.
—Dorothy Porter1
More than most philosophers, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche commands
a following of readers who attempt, each in his or her own manner, to
perpetuate his legacy. Many of these thinkers have dedicated a great deal
of their lives not only to reading and interpreting Nietzsche’s texts, but
also attempting to actualize “the event” his writings only envisage: the
revaluation of values, wherein philosophers forge their truths from strength,
rather than in the spirit of life-negation. Nietzsche’s writings are attractive to
contemporary philosophers for a number of reasons, each of which reflects
a different interpretation of what it is to be a contemporary philosopher; or
more specifically, a philosopher of Nietzsche’s future. Nietzsche is readily
appropriated by conservative philosophers, who identify “the leveling” of
culture with the attempt to improve access to education for women, ethnic
minorities, and those who are otherwise systematically disadvantaged.2
There is thus a conservative strain within Nietzsche’s work—for instance, his
appeal to Greek culture and Roman Imperialism3—which clearly resonates
with an intolerance for the ideal of “equality for all” that many contemporary
academics, indeed, many Nietzscheans, would laud.
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