[lbo-talk] Nietzche: Left or Right? (was Re: Bush and Foucault)

wrobert at uci.edu wrobert at uci.edu
Thu Jun 7 18:29:02 PDT 2007



>
> The Nietzsche-Foucault-Marxist area of thought is an

> area I'm extremely excited & interested in. Does
> anyone know of a list (a "left-Nietzschean" list) that
> explores this specific area? Not a list run by
> Fou-Cult gurus, but one a bit more liberal and lax?
> I'm interested in other writers that have plumbed
> these depths. Like I mentioned, _The Philosophy of
> Friedrich Nietzsche_ by HL Mencken, with the
> explanatory intro by anarchist Charles Bufe, is
> excellent, esp. where the Bufe into lays out where
> Nietzsche converges and diverges with left-libertarian
> thought. ANd again there is the book _I Am Not a Man,
> I Am Dynamite: Nietzsche and the Anarchist Tradition_
> which reveals his influence on anarchism, even though
> Nietzsche explicitly condemned anarcists as suffering
> from ressentiment.

I would recommend Wendy Brown's work, States of Injury, which is a critique of a certain feminist politic that call to the state for protection, although I think that its analysis of the concept of wounded identity can be used in other contexts. To be honest, this has been my largest engagement in Nietzsche (my interests are more Spinozist.) I have also heard good things about Deleuze's analysis. I think that the largest Nietzsche influence on historical materialism is rather indirect, from Sorel to his critical uptake in Gramsci. To turn to your earlier comment about N's rather dubious politics, the unfortunate thing is that if one were to reject philosophers for racism and misogyny we would be erasing a great deal of continental philosophy if not all of it.

robert wood


> Additionally, French writer Daniel Colson wrote about
> Nietzsche's influence on early French and European
> syndicalism. We know some ex-syndicalists (like
> Mussolini) went on to fascism; yet other syndicalists
> *fought* fascism and paid with their lives. And yet
> both would claim at one time or another an
> intellectual debt with Nietzsche.
>
> It's an area I'd like to discuss in depth, but LBO's
> 3-post a day limit would relegate it to a sideshow
> here and I'd rather not expend my 3 post iimit on it.
> This is my 4th for today, i think.
>
> -B.
>
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>



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