From: "Frank W. Stevenson" <t22006-AT-cc.ntnu.edu.tw>
Subject: Re: Of the Three Metamorphoses
Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2002 09:20:28 +0800


    very nice discussion(s) which i have enjoyed reading quite a
lot......fws

----- Original Message -----
From: "Ruth Chandler" <R.Chandler-AT-ucc.ac.uk>
To: <nietzsche-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, February 27, 2002 12:18 AM
Subject: Re: Of the Three Metamorphoses


> Hi Rebecca
>
> Doesn't look like anyone wants to play!
>
> Juts to say I thought your analysis sounds really interesting, especially
on taking the personal dimension into a political dimension. It is really
hard to do this, however, without ending up with a crude psychologism, a
central actor on the stage. This is especially apposite when one starts to
document the presence of this 'actor' or actress in the developmental
narratives embedded in the theoretical tools which are taken to
Nietzsche.Irigaray and Oliver spring to mind here). My way round this
dilemma has been to draw on people like Liz Stanley's auto/biographical
approach which sees the 'self' as an intersection, or multiple network, of
signs, that organise the body politically. One cannot extrapolate from the
organisation of one body to the body politic but the body politic can be
said to be made up of an aggregation of bodies. Hence the problem translates
into how do specific political desires clump together at any given moment-at
what point do these become counter -intutive? I am not keen on victimologies
but, as you point out, this can also lead to an effacement of actual victims
under  the scorn of ones fear of showing that one has any ressentiment at
all! The way laughter works in N is interesting in this respect. The problem
is difficult but I am happier to accept  a thesis of political desire than a
politics from N. On the other hand, he does diagnose contemporary politics
very well ( in so far as it is the triumph of forces he would consider
repugnant). I  don't see any way out of this dilemma other than suggesting
that there is an archepelago of ressentiments in each and every body. Only
by confronting this, I would suggest, is it possibile to open the way for
actual transfiguration of existing politics.
>
> Anyhow hope your writing up goes well-similarly pushed so dropping out of
sight for a while.
> Ruth.C
>
> NB. Did you you know that Deleuze refers to Nietzsche as the one exception
to his philosophical buggeries one thinker-i.e the one that creeps up behind
him when he's not looking.
>
>
> >>> Rebecca Stringer <rebecca.stringer-AT-stonebow.otago.ac.nz> 02/23 3:05 am
>>>
>
> ><< what kind of critical posture is steeped in what it denounces?>>
> >
> >Almost every critical posture. For example, one can easily find
socialists
> >who love "humanity" but are nasty and dismissive of the people in their
> >immediate sphere. As Emerson (who N admired) said in Self-Reliance, "Thy
> >charity abroad is spite at home." It is our own inner paradoxes that
surfaces
> >through these abstractions.
>
> beautifully put, I know what you mean & my question must have appeared
> naive in that these ideas have been central for critical theory for some
> time. I guess what I was getting at is that there's a particular problem
in
> this regard w. ressentiment insofar as one redraws ress when impugning it
> (as the work of staten, picart, ridley & derrida has suggested - i'm not
> sure this redrawing is necessary, but it's common). this problem is acute
> for the analysis i'm working on as ress. has been used extensively (often
> rightly) to critique victimology/victim politics but often ends up
> facilitating reverse victimologies/ressentiments - redistributions rather
> than deconstructions of victim status. in working on this my position is
> very far from writing n. off for his difficulty, although my cranky email
> probably suggested this.
>
> >N's later writing was episodic, since he was in almost continual pain of
one
> >kind or another, and his writing can be seen as outburst of someone in
pain.
> >A portrait certainly, but hardly a systematic exposition, and hardly a
> >politics, unless it be a politics of his own body.
>
> yes (i reckon one of the best documents of this writing/pain is
> chamberlain's _Nietzsche in Turin_). although deleuze does point out that
> GOM is his most 'systematic' work which is significant for the study of
> ress. also, in case i've been misunderstood, wasn't really chastising n.
> for not being systematic (a reactive reading) - my concern is that
> secondary diagnostic use of ress. tends to stabilise/systematise the
> concept rather than investigate its instabilities - its forgotten
umbrellas
> (esp the sense in BGE that there's no clean place to stand contra GOM's
> stark typology, among a great many others).
>
> >It is in his personal applications, rather than the political
> >extensions, that N strikes deepest.
>
> i would have to agree with this. my only doubt being that ress. does seem
> to describe a (not the) process through which political desire (as
> anti-politics or otherwise) is forged (N.'s late declarations about being
> 'ready to rule' come to mind here), so there may be grounds on which to
> frey the distinction between personal application & political extension
(to
> extract a teaching about political desire rather than a political theory).
>
> thanks for your responses - Ruth's framing of the problem is esp.
> interesting too. I'll leave it here as you've the child thread to work on
&
> my deadline is ever closer.
> R
>
>
>
>
>
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>

!
>

>
>
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