Alan D. Schrift

Transforming the hermeneutic context : from Nietzsche to Nancy

General Editor, The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche (Stanford University Press) Member, Editorial Board, Journal of the History of Philosophy, Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy, Journal of Nietzsche Studies, New Nietzsche Studies, Southern Journal of Philosophy Member, Advisory Board, symplokē Editorial Consultant, Continental Philosophy Review, International Studies in Philosophy

Why Nietzsche still? : reflections on drama, culture, and politics

Contributors: David B. Allison Debra B. Bergoffen Wendy Brown Judith Butler Daniel W. Conway John Burt Foster Jr. Duncan Large Alphonso Lingis Jeffrey T. Nealon David Owen Paul Patton Aaron Ridley Alan D. Schrift Gary Shapiro Rebecca Stringer Dana R. Villa

Response to Don Dombowsky

“The only valid tribute to thought such as Nietzsche’s,” Michel Foucault remarked in a 1975 interview, “is precisely to use it, to deform it, to make it groan and protest.”1 While this may not be the only valid tribute, it is certainly one way to honor the thinking of this most protean and experimental of thinkers. Don Dombowsky would seem to disagree, and he objects to the interpretive work of those “radical democratic readers of Nietzsche” who wish to find in Nietzsche’s texts resources for a project of radical democracy, a project that I, and others like Lawrence Hatab or Mark Warren, readily admit is one that Nietzsche himself would likely have repudiated. That Nietzsche makes the antidemocratic comments that Dombowsky cites is not, therefore, at issue. Nor is the “real question” the one Dombowsky articulates: “is Nietzschean agonism really democratic?” Rather, the fundamental thesis I sought to articulate in Nietzsche for Democracy?2 was simply this: there are themes in Nietzsche perspectivism, his affirmation of agonism, his destabilization of the subject that a radical democratic theorist can appeal to in developing their political theory. This is not to claim, as Dombowsky thinks I do, that, for example, “concern for those in positions of social subordination” is a value “reflected in the Nietzschean corpus,” or that Nietzsche can be viewed “as an activist for those who suffer from unjust or inequitable distributions of power.” I make no such claim about Nietzsche’s “concern for those in positions of social subordination,” nor do I put him forward as a role-model for socially progressive activism. I do claim that the ability to see things differently (“with different eyes”) from the ways encouraged by the hegemonic power structures of the socially dominant is necessary “for those individuals who find themselves in historically marginalized and socially subordinated positions”3 if they are to resist these hegemonic power structures. But this is not to claim, as Dombowsky seems to imply, that Nietzsche would want the socially subordinated to resist. Nor is it to claim that

NIETZSCHE, FOUCAULT, DELEUZE, AND THE SUBJECT OF RADICAL DEMOCRACY

Andrew Wernick gives us much to think about when he chooses to engage the comparison of Deleuze, Foucault, and Derrida by considering their work in terms of a French sociological tradition from and against which they emerge.1 Wernick wants to challenge the standard story – the one invoked by Derrida in “The Ends of Man” – that frames the genealogy of French poststructuralism as both carrying on while at the same time problematizing the structuralist challenge to the philosophical anthropology of existentialist humanism. He does so initially by questioning just how well Derrida’s account – in terms of re-reading the phenomenologists anew and recuperating their own critique of philosophical anthropology – fits the work of Foucault and Deleuze. And this seems to me correct. After all, in the preface to the English translation of The Order of Things, Foucault goes so far as to specify phenomenology as the single method he rejects absolutely, while Deleuze largely positions his work against the tradition of the “three H’s” – Hegel, Husserl, and Heidegger – who so preoccupied the early Derrida. Wernick wants to challenge the standard story because it situates the genealogy of poststructuralism in German philosophy, while Wernick sees a more indigenous origin to the question of man, namely, the tradition of French sociology that runs from the humanism of Comte and Durkheim to the rebellions of Nizan and Bataille to the anti-humanism of Lévi-Strauss. Wernick is not interested in making a “nationalist” argument for its own sake, however. Rather, as he puts it, to tell the story of the genealogy of poststructuralism as a chapter in the rise and fall of French sociology allows us to see what, following Pierre Bourdieu’s formulation, is the real heresy of poststructuralism, namely, the refusal to posit anything that might occupy the site of a collec-

LOGICS OF THE GIFT IN CIXOUS AND NIETZSCHE: Can We Still Be Generous?

Since Marcel MaussÕs well-known and influential Essai sur le don first appeared in 1924, gifts and gift exchange have often been studied and theorized within the field of anthropology. But until quite recently, gifts and giftgiving were not themes able to sustain much interest in the other humanities and social science disciplines. In the past twenty-five years, however, that all has changed, as gifts and giftgiving have emerged as central issues within a range of divergent discourses. Whether inscribed within a tradition that traces itself to MaussÕs Essai, to Georges BatailleÕs articulation of a general economy of expenditure, or to Martin HeideggerÕs reflections on the Òes gibtÓ of Sein, philosophers, literary critics, and literary theorists have with increasing frequency joined anthropologists and sociologists in reflecting upon various economic phenomena in the context of their attempts to theorize gift exchange. In fact, the theme of the gift can be located at the center of many current discussions of deconstruction, gender, ethics, philosophy, anthropology, and economics, and, to make an even stronger claim, I would argue that it is one of the primary points at which contemporary disciplinary and interdisciplinary discourses intersect. An answer to the question of why the gift has attracted such attention is suggested by the orientation taken by two of the thinkers whose works frame, in one way or another, contemporary discourse on the gift. For in their respective investigations, both MaussÕs and BatailleÕs reflections are directed by clear political agendas. In MaussÕs case, he claims explicitly that the analysis of the social rules at work in gift exchange in the archaic societies he examines allows us to draw moral conclusions concerning the organizational principles that ground our own society. He thus closes his essay with a self-proclaimed lesson in ÒcivicsÓ that offers a response both to the recent violence of the First World War and to the ongoing unequal distribution of wealth. Far from being a disinterested act of squandering, his analysis of the agonistic expenditure of the potlatch showed how it, like other gifts, led to the establishment of social and economic hierarchies. If our society is to avoid such hierarchies and the social instability that results from them, it can do so, Mauss argues, only by more equitably distributing access to the Òcommon store of wealth.Ó Mauss closes his Essai by noting that his research leads to the following conclusion: