Gregory Polly wrote:
> 2. I know better than to keep repeating this, but: isn't there somebody
> out there among the academic left that can see *some* problem, however
> minimal, with constructing an "anti-fascist" ethic with _The Will to
> Power_ as an ur-text?
Well, that all depends. It depends on: 1) what you take the fundamental
tenets of "the left" to be; 2) what you take the dichotomy
fascism/anti-fascism to mean; 3) how you read Nietzsche; 4) what you take
the relationship between Nietzsche and "fascism" (and a whole bunch of other
-isms) to be. It probably depends on more than that (for example, how you
think of reading and interpretation in general) but this should be
enough.
While someone like Foucault has undoubtedly come in for strong criticisms of
"the left" (most noticeably Habermas but also Tom McCarthy, Nancy Fraser,
and Seyla Benhabib) he (MF) seems to have a legitimate a claim to being a
leftist as do his critics while, _at the same time_, having legitimate
claims to being a Nietzschean. We might note in passing that the substance
of the leftist critique of Foucault is quite similar to the rightist
critique elucidated by Luc Ferry and Alain Renaut -- this should give one
pause. Now, when Foucault wrote of Anti-Oedipus that it was an anti-fascist
text, I took this to mean anti-fascist at the level of the individual (if I
can be permitted this word in this context). That is, the fascism here
under consideration is not that of national politics but is the working out
of theoretical, political, economic, etc. forces of modernity at the level
of the individual. And that sounds like a leftist analysis to me (in the
tradition of critical theory).
Much of the Nietzschean critique of traditional forms of leftism voiced by
Foucault, D&G, etc. is that traditional leftism fails to escape the
dichotomies of (pick your terms) the Enlightenment, capitalism, metaphysics,
etc. That is, the type of criticism offered by Nietzschean critics is
largely inconceivable within the traditional paradigms of western thinking.
This is why both leftists _and_ rightists see it as dangerous. The leftists
because they think it merely reifies the strucutres that are (a standard
criticism of foucault) and the rightists because they see as threatening the
very traditions which make both leftism and rightism possible.
As for the connection between Nietzsche and fascism: it is no doubt the case
that much of Nietzsche's writing is amenable to a fascist interpretation.
But it is also the case that his writings are not internally coherent or
consistent, that much of what he says in one place he contradicts in
another, and that there are some number of plausible readings of Nietzsche
which see his work as anti-fascist and even suitable for democratic
theorizing (which doesn't mean that FN himself was a democrat): Bill
Connolly, Larry Hatab, Bonny Honig.
It just seems far too easy to assume that leftism is one thing, fascism is
another, Nietzsche is a third, and we can clearly and easily see how they
all fit together.
I could go on but this is neither the leftism nor the Nietzsche list so I'll
just stop.
Jonathan Maskit
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////// "The earth is not the physical center of the universe,
//// but it is the metaphysical center."
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// --Hegel
/
Jonathan Maskit
bfultner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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