Date: Wed, 03 Oct 2001 14:35:54 +0100
From: Ruth Chandler <R.Chandler-AT-ucc.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: death as eventS?


Hi Mark Chris,

There are many kinds of friend in Nietzsche but distance is important to all of them-and yes the point is that the greatest love is at the greatest distance with proximity chracterised by strife, this is a theatre of cruelty rather than a theatre of terror in as much as the agon is not constituted by revenge. it all becomes more complicated when, at the end of GOM, N tells us that he knows of no friends and the desire becomes a temporal as well as a psychological spatial distancing- kind of makes it rather difficult to contemplate being in the same room - but see also second preface to Human all too Human where N points out that the desire for friends ones who would 'share his taste in foregrounds' is the motivating force behind his earlier writings- there is also the creative friend in Z in whom a whole world resides

Klossowski talks about N's break with Wagner as the paternal shadow and his failure to gain Lou Salome as a disciple ( in said paternal economy) as a peculiar inversion of the Freudian theatre but this significantly underestimates the importnace his fruaght relations with both of these play in the modifications of his views on freindship. the move from a kind of sympathetic friendship which may repose in its differences to an idea of friendship that is entirely non-existent, displaced into the yet to come is very much marked by these details. in all case, a certain physical antipathy is required for friendship not to be love between the sexes but in, many senses, this view of freindship transcends anything that could be produced in marriage-it should be added that N considers the married philosopher to be a joke, dispite popping the question to any potential nurse/secretary he came across.

Ruth.C
>>> Mark Crosby <Crosby_M-AT-rocketmail.com> 10/02 5:33 pm >>>
--- Chris McMahon <pharmakeus-AT-hotmail.com> wrote:
> Thanks Mark,

Likewise, Chris; let me just say: "For the hermit, the
friend is always the third person.  The third is the
cork that prevents the conversation of the two from
sinking into the depths" (Nietzsche, "On the Friend",
_Thus Spake Zarathustra_ ;)

> That clarifies. But then, is the *event* in the
> "event" or in the *perceiver*/becomer?

Well, that's one thing I've been struggling with in
these last few threads: this sometimes seeming dualism
in Deleuze between immanence and transcendence -- Is
the virtual *event* merely coexistent with the actual
'event' as ACCIDENT or are they 'really' two 'sides'
of the same process / thing?

> Re: Phalanx utopia. Have to disagree.

I'm not sure what you're disagreeing with. This idea
of distributed 'phalanxs' sounds intriguing (although
it also sounds a bit too close to Laclau's
'formations' and their associated identity politics to
me..) Nor do I disagree with utopian desires. 

What bothered me in that "BOREAL CROWN and THE
DOWNFALL OF CIVILIZATION" piece is the absurd
assumption of the first sentence below and the
oppositional position of the second sentence:

"For Nature is naturally 'generous'. Marriage,
poverty, work, morality, loneliness, alienation,
violence, boredom -- these civilized miseries
constitute the perverse results of a system which
benefits a few at the expense of the health of Earth
herself". 

Now, I cited Zarathustra above and mentioned Laclau,
but have to confess that I know next to nothing about
either of these luminaries.  I would not have been
able to respond here at all had I not (re)read Nathan
Widder's wonderful essay "What's Lacking in the Lack"
(December 2000 _Angelaki_ -- which I was able to print
out and read last July only after Taylor & Francis
offered free trial access online..)

I say this because I do not have any background in the
social critiques you're probably drawing on AND I do
not have a good feeling for Nietzschean ressentiment
(the opposition to and hatred for social institutions
apparent in the quote above seems to me a clear
example of ressentiment!) Ruth's comments --

< the revolutionary, is probably a bit like the
artist-caught up in the doing unleashes active forces
that are not separated from what they they can do,
they make time as they live it - while some activities
may be free from ressentiment, i don't think any
bodies are, it is a question of degree thats all and
of putting the ressentiments one has into alteration
with revolutionary practices. N locates ressentiment
in the body deprived of the immedaite action or
reaction forced to take imaginary revenge - this is
what makes the human animal interesting in the first
place, the labyrinthine soul complicates itself
because it cannot discharge its forces outwards. >

-- are extremely helpful for me in understanding
this.. THANKS Ruth!

> 1. The only "rational" society is a rationalized
> one.

WHO is to rationalize the society we have or should
have other than the multitudes of desiring machines
currently engaged in its production? Or, if you
believe in a transcendent(al?) Ruling Class running
things and everyone else just slaves to what they
signify, how is 'their' society not already a
'rationalized one'? 

Probably I just don't know what distinctions you're
drawing here, but it sounds, to me, too close to what
Nathan describes in Laclau: "Hegemony is the
indispensible, internal movement that establishes
meaning by fixing differences with a discursive
totality".

> 2. Foucault on production of "passions" (apologies
> for the semaphore, but you know what I mean, the old
> perceived/real nutmeg rephrased with "passion").

> 3. And this is the big one. The Cells (or Phalanxes)
> should not be bands of "friends". If anything they
> should be groups of enemies.

THIS was the clue that led me back to Nathan's paper
because his conclusion had stuck in my mind:

"Against the Christian exhortation to love thy
neighbors, Nietzsche proclaims the opposite: 'It is
those farther away who must pay for the love of your
neighbor ... I recommend to you the love of the
farthest' [Z "On the Love of the Neighbor"]. The
strife and conflict with the 'enemy' - and the
'friend' for that matter - remains, but no longer in
the brute form of opposition".

positively, Mark 
(but desiring distance from "difference as spacing" ;)


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