File spoon-archives/nietzsche.archive/nietzsche_1995/nietzsche_Feb.95.8-15, message 61


Date: Fri, 10 Feb 1995 10:11:26 -0600
From: Jim Elson <jlelson-AT-utdallas.edu>
Subject: Re: Nietzsche/Foucault/Genealogy (fwd)


> 
>[In repsonse to Hippen's early post, Jim Elson replied:] 
> > I would also concur that genealogy subverts/undermines the "rules",
> > but I wonder about your usage of "parasitic" since this term is
> > usually employed as a prophylatic against arguments which call
> > the foundations/methods/grounds of traditional thought into question.
> > 
>
On Thu, 9 Feb 1995, Benjamin Erik Hippen replied:
> 
> Raymond Geuss (but please don't hold him responsible if I get this wrong) 
> likes to distinguish between "genealogy" and "pedigree", where a pedigree 
> serves the function of legitimating a claim by establishing an unbroken 
> though sometimes convoluted lineage (such as a family tree), whereas a 
> genealogy is designed to make use of the convolutedness or 
> discontinuities for delegitimating purposes.  I don't know if that is a 
> more useful distinction or not.  The legitimacy/delegitimacy distinction 
> might capture your "why"/"how" suggestion.
> 
It captures some of it.  What I see occurring in genealogies is not
so such a historical narrative, but an 'unmasking'.  They may be
very direct and polemic, e.g. _On the Genealogy of Morals_ which
invites the reader to interpret religion as being governed by the
very principles which it denounces.  Less polemic one invite the
reader to take a number of interpretative perspectives which also
functions as 'unmasking', but not "unmasking", in since it shows
the possibilities of interpretations other than the "accepted"/
"authorized"/"authentic"/"true" one.
 
> I think you're right about the possibly negative nuance of the word 
> "parasitic", and though I didn't mean to use it in the prophylatic sense,
> I thought it captured the way in which genealogy directly relies on the
> framework in question and breaks it down from within that framework.

You're right, it does.  I wasn't sure if you were using it ironically.

[Some excellent commentary by Ben omitted.]
 
> Thus, an awareness of the "death of God" is an awareness of seeing 
> "truth" as a set of instantiated structures that do not derive from some 
> overarching authority.  The result is either nihilism ("There is no 
> truth!") which may have a variety of consequences, or a new-found freedom 
> to create oneself.  It is this self-creation that I believe lies at the 
> heart of both Nietzsche's and Foucault's projects: the idea that once 
> emancipated from particular games of truth, one can create one's own 
> structures: self-creation becomes the creation of both form and content, 
> rather than just content.
> 
> Does this sound plausible? 

Very much so.  The "demise of the highest of all values" can also be
described as becoming aware of the _Abgrund_ in which we as humans
have always found ourselves.  We may write whatever we desire into
our tables of value.  I think your comment about "both form and
content" is right on, for N.'s notion of _Ubermenschen_ seems
to demand it.


===========================================================================James L Elson:              |<o  When you stare into the abyss too long  o>|
School of Arts & Humanities |<o       the abyss stares back into you.    o>|
University of Texas-Dallas  |                  --Nietzsche--               |


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