File spoon-archives/nietzsche.archive/nietzsche_1995/nietzsche_Mar.95, message 38


Date: Thu, 16 Mar 95 0:47 GMT
From: WIDDER-AT-VAX.LSE.AC.UK
Subject: RE: postmodernism


David,

I'll ask once again, who on earth are these 'postmodernists' who dismiss the
subject tout court?  The title of a book suggests nothing at all.  Does Derrida
dismiss the subject entirely?  Does Foucault?  Even if he says 'the subject is
dead', are you seriously going to put that statement forth as proof without
any more analysis of what Foucault says?

Here's a quote from Judith Butler, someone who is often subsumed under the
term postmodernism:  "To take the construction of the subject as a politica
problematic is not the same as doing away with the subject...To deconstruct
is not to negate or dismiss, but to call into question and, perhaps more
importantly, to open up a term, like the subject, to usage and redeployment
that previously had not been authorized" (from the opening essay of FEMINISTS
THEORIZE THE POLITICAL).

As for Nietzsche's conception of illusion, I think you'll have a tough time
showing that for Nietzsche underneath this illusion is some solid essence or
truth.  Just about every one of Nietzsche's positive affirmations is delivered
with a good solid dose of self-irony (i.e., suppose truth is a woman, suppose
the world is will to power).  As for whether the idea of a gap of knowledge
implies a subject who cannot know himself, well, there's a point to this.  But
again, the point is not that the gap makes the subject simply disappear, but
that the gap is both constitutive and subversive of subjectivity.  Hence the
subject ultimately rests upon a paradox.  Generally, in all the 'postmodernist'
writings I've ever come across, what is being presented is some version of 
this paradox, not some simple dismissal of the subject.

Again, if anyone's going to suggest that posty's are this naive, it would be
a good idea to start quoting them and analyzing what they say, and not what
someone like Higgens, Habermas, Lois MacNay or any of these other types say
they are saying.

Nathan
widder-AT-vax.lse.ac.uk


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