Fragmentary writings in studying Nietzsche

Caryn Tan Week 10 Q&Q

Deleuze: Nomad Thought

Question: Is there a Deleuze-Kant link going on especially with regards to Kant's idea sublime? i.e. the free play of reason and imagination which Deleuze himself adopts as a term he uses several times. For Kant, the feeling of sublimity is in us (the subject). But for Deleuze, he seems to be saying that it is about “exteriority” Is he trying to invert whatever Kant says? e.g. by talking about it not being about interiority (the subject/author) but exteriority i.e. the amalgam of one’s experiences for instance? But in tracing this line of thought, I find myself putting the focus on "the subject's" experiences again when in many places, Deleuze asserts that it is not about the subject. On page 146, he says "it must be seen as a dynamic flux... the state of experience is not subjective in origin... moreover it is not individual. It is a continuous flux and the disruption of flux, and each pulsational intensity necessarily bears a relation to another intensity, a point of contact and transmission." How can something be in a continuous flux? Is it like (In Kant's terms) Reason and imagination going absolutely crazy? Then what happens?

Quote: “Those who have read Nietzsche without laughing… have in a sense not read Nietzsche at all. This is not only true for Nietzsche but for all other authors who belong to the same horizon of our counterculture. One of the things that reflect our decadence, our degeneration, is the manner in which people feel the need to express their anguish, solitude, guilt, to dramatize encounters – the whole tragedy of interiority.”

Again, so it is not about interiority, one’s inner soul of consciousness, inner essence but the exterior (by which Nietzche’s writings ground his thought on an immediate relation with the exterior). So if we do not laugh, does it mean we are not drawing the right exterior connections? Not understanding the free play? If not, then what?

Foucault: Nietzsche, Genealogy, History

Question: How then is Foucault different from Nietzsche? (Or is there any difference between Foucault and Nietzsche?)

On close reading of the text, one can surely detect many similitudes between Nietzsche and Foucault. First off is ‘emergence’ as an entry of forces, a place of confrontation, struggle; the role of genealogy as the role to reestablish systems of subjection and the hazardous play of dominations. This seems much like Nietzsche’s idea of a ‘warlike’ life – the true essence of life i.e. the selfsame recurrence and constant facing and overcoming of struggles. Or take Foucault’s opinion on history that is negatively affected by rationality (whose original progenitor he claims himself (as did Nietzsche) is Socrates), constantly “invoking objectivity” and pretending to be objective – and hence essentially suppressing the individual’s will to knowledge (vis-à-vis pursuit of knowledge in itself) and hence power of living his own existence. But wherein lies the difference between Nietzsche and Foucault then? We could take it to be his methodology in studying historical knowledge: i.e. studying how power is inscribed in bodies, how the modern subject is a product of the conflicting forces in history, but I think my question is whether there is a wholly different framework for Foucault which he takes from Nietzsche and makes something out of him for himself? I think this is important because if one truly understands Nietzsche, one understands the importance of the individuation of the self and developing one’s own syntax for action.

Quote: “monumental history” itself is a parody. Genealogy is history in the form of a concerted carnival.”

So monumental history is a parody because one just adopts and pick from the multiplicity of identities, selective actions, the high points of historical development etc? Or is it a parody because history is in denial and fails to realize the multiplicity of masks and identities and hence, the constructionism and unreality of it? Or could it be a parody because it history negates and overlooks the dissimilarities, discontinuities and other isolated events and seek to forcibly associate and unify them under a “mask?” I think it is important to understand this so that we can understand why Foucault describes Genealogy as a history in the form of a concerted carnival. Concerted because if we understand the parody of history in the third option, then it is indeed like a concerted carnival: where the historian happily devise, plan and pick events and unify them under his discretion yet claim its anonymity and objectivity. This latter move of the historian can also be the “parody.” Yet, what then is the most accurate understanding of this quote?

Derrida: The Question of Style

Question: femininity in Derrida is hence not correlated to “women” (real women)? Femininity is thus just castration itself in Derrida’s terms? So when one “becomes female,” “becomes Christian” this essentially entail being feminine?

Quote: “Hymen, with its completely undecidable meaning, hasn’t happened except when it has not happened, when nothing really happens, when there is consummation without violence, or violence without thrust, or thrust without mark, mark without mark (margin), etc., when the veil is torn without being torn; for example when someone is made to die of laughter or happiness.”