I did a check of the Alternative Press Index, and none of the 145
references to Nietzsche I found triggered any memories. However, this
paragraph in Malcolm Bull's "WHERE IS THE ANTI-NIETZSCHE?" rings a bell:
Through the act of reading, Nietzsche flatteringly offers identification
with the masters to anyone, but not to everyone. Identification with the
masters means imaginative liberation from all the social, moral and
economic constraints within which individuals are usually confined;
identification with 'the rest' involves reading one's way through many
pages of abuse directed at people like oneself. Unsurprisingly, people of
all political persuasions and social positions have more readily
discovered themselves to belong to the former category. For who, in the
privacy of a reading, can fail to find within themselves some of those
qualities of honesty and courage and loftiness of soul that Nietzsche
describes?
It is likely, then, that I read this article six years ago and retained a
slight imprint of it. Reading it now, it's obvious that if I did read it
before, I didn't absorb a whole lot. Bull begins by reviewing both leftist
apologia for Nietzsche and recent leftist criticisms of him. But from what
position can Nietzsche convincingly be opposed, given the historical role
he envisioned for himself? From here Bull addresses Nietzsche's flattery
of his "exclusive" readers as epitomized in the quote above. The specific
mechanisms encoded into Nietzsche's approach to his readers are detailed.
The most tempting strategy is "reading for victory". Bull puts it this way:
Within this process, readers sometimes identify with the goals of
characters who may be in many or all external respects (age, race, gender,
class etc.) dissimilar to themselves. But the goals with which they
identify-escaping death, finding a mate, achieving personal fulfilment-are
almost always ones shared by the reader in that they reflect rational
self-interest. The effect of identifying with the goals of protagonists on
the basis of self-interest is that the act of reading becomes an attempt
to succeed in the same objectives that the reader pursues in everyday
life. Indeed, success in the act of reading may actually serve to
compensate the reader for their relative inability to realize those same
objectives in their own lives. Hence perhaps the apparent paradox
generated by Nietzsche's popularity amongst disadvantaged groups he went
out of his way to denigrate. They, too, are reading for victory,
struggling to wrest success from the text by making themselves the heroes
of Nietzsche's narrative.
The possibility of "reading like a loser" is also offered, but adapting
this strategy is likely to prove very difficult. One is apt to end up
regarding oneself as a philistine, or being relegated to the subhuman
(equated by Nietzsche with the "egalitarian projects of democracy and
socialism"). Bull explains these concepts at length and I cannot summarize
them here. He also details something he calls the "negative ecology of
value."
There is also a section on "total society", on the division of labor and
Durkheim's notion of mechanical vs. organic solidarity. I have trouble
fully absorbing this argument. The conclusion to this section though is this:
It is Nietzsche's commitment to an ecology of value that makes him an
anti-social thinker. The boundaries of society must be constricted in
order to sustain the flower of value. For the anti-Nietzschean, however,
the argument will go the other way. The boundaries of society must be
extended in order to decrease the possibility of value, for the negative
ecology of value is total society.
Bull's final thought experiment involves the consequences of what we would
call animal rights. The conclusion of an anti-Nietzschean argument leads
to apparently unacceptable conclusions, and so the last sentence embodies
an aching irony:
Even if not undertaken with this intention, extending the boundaries of
society to include members of other species is liable to devalue
specifically human values, notably those of culture. Not only does it run
counter to the Nietzschean argument that (super)humans, as the sole
value-creating species, should live in a world that maximizes their
capacity to flourish at the expense of other non-value generating species,
but by including within society so many unregenerate philistines, it
undermines the capacity for human culture to function as a shared value
within the expanded society. In such a philistine ecology, some redundant
piece of the West's cultural heritage might prove to be a suitable
location for an autonomous simian group. Perhaps the Louvre, and its
collections, could be put at the disposal of apes freed from zoos and
research laboratories: the long galleries could be used for sleeping and
recreation, the Jardin des Tuileries for foraging. Who but a Nietzschean
could object?
At 10:40 PM 7/30/2006 -0400, Ralph Dumain wrote:
Ransacking my poor brains about all the left journals I've read in the
past 15 years, it occurred to me that New Left Review is a possible
candidate for the phantom Nietzsche article I once read. I don't think
that's quite right, but it feels closer than any of the others so far. I
have no idea of where my old issues of NLR are, nor do I even remember
whether I ever subscribed. Anyway, searching the online index for all the
Nietzsche articles, I came across one that looks mighty familiar:
MALCOLM BULL
WHERE IS THE ANTI-NIETZSCHE?
New Left Review 3, May-June 2000
Opposed to everyone, Nietzsche has met with remarkably little opposition.
In fact, his reputation has suffered only one apparent reversehis
enthusiastic adoption by the Nazis. But, save in Germany, Nietzsches
association with the horrors of the Second World War and the Holocaust has
served chiefly to stimulate further curiosity. Of course, the monster has
had to be tamed, and Nietzsches thought has been cleverly reconstructed
so as perpetually to evade the evils perpetrated in his name. Even those
philosophies for which he consistently reserved his most biting
contemptsocialism, feminism and Christianityhave sought to appropriate
their tormentor. Almost everybody now claims Nietzsche as one of their
own; he has become what he most wanted to beirresistible.
http://www.newleftreview.net/?view=2249
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