Date: Wed, 20 Dec 1995 10:14:36 -0500 (EST)
From: V200KG6U-AT-ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu
Subject: Re: superWOman was here



Babette,

Again, I don't agree entirely with the idea that "one is to become
the one one is," or that this phrasing captures fully what is entailed
in 'How one becomes what one is'.  And yet I do agree with the second
part of your comment; namely, that the task of giving style to one's
character is what Nietzsche names 'amor fati'.  

As I read it amor fati involves the casting of onseself--without regard
for risks or consequences--into the boundaryless pulsating seas of
life after the death of God.  Whiter is God, Nietzsche asks, is it
not growing colder, darker and darker, is there any longer an up
or down, or sideways, is not everything thrown into chaotic turmoil
without respite or ground now that God is dead?  The point I
gravitate to in this passage which I am paraphrasing is the indication
of an endless night, a night that grows only darker and darker, without
ever reaching--if I may put it this way--completion.  God's death
forecloses the possibility of ever arriving at the night within the
night, turning us back onto the flattened expanse of an endless
night.  Toward this abyssal darkness Nietzsche affirms his own
amor fati, gives style to a life that is, in effect, drained of all
that Christianity and the philosophical tradition had once bestowed
upon it.  Life is no longer life, for with the death of God comes also
the death of death.  May we then refer to life, when what we realize by
life is an endless life, a life without the limit of its other, death?
The answer, I think, for Nietzsche is yes, though by life we affirm
not the exception of its organic (and thus organized) determination,
but rather the inorganic overabundance that exceeds, overwhelms organic
life. (Gay Science, 109?)  

How one becomes what one is, then, is no longer a matter of explaining
who we are, but rather 'what' when what we are is, in effect, impossible!
I wonder if we might take as an example of this Kafka's "Hunger Artist."
The hunger artist surely gives style to his character, in fact style is
all he has given that his art--starvation--is itself imperceptible,
and definitely non-representational.  All that indicates to those
who pass by him tat *something* is happening are the various outward
trappings: the cage, the lions who stand by, the guards who watch
over to ensure that he does not eat.  Otherwise, it appears that there
is nothing happening, for who can 'see' a man starving himself?  
The hunger artist, rather than suggesting an integration of art and
artist, brings to the fore the very real possibility of the
artist's dis-integration in art--that is, the becoming 'what' he is.

Thanks for your reply, Babette.  

Yours,

Chris Devenney
Dept. of Comp. Lit.
SUNY -AT- Buffalo


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