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Golden calf : Deleuze's Nietzsche in the time of Trump
Sharpe, Matthew
Sharpe, Matthew
Author
Abstract
This paper examines how Gilles Deleuze addresses, and fail to address, the darker strata in Nietzsche’s work which has enabled his work to be claimed by almost every far-right European political movement since the 1890s to the Alt-Right today. Part I argues that four rhetorical strategies are present which serve to domesticate Nietzsche’s ideas concerning class and caste, race and sexuality, and his opposition to forms of liberalism, democracy, feminism and socialism: avoiding directly political subjects which Nietzsche returned to; catachrestic use of political words to describe ostensibly supra- or non-political data; denials of Nietzsche’s rightist positions, followed by justifications which, upon analysis, do not support the denials but ‘change the subject’; openly erroneous misrepresentations of divisive subjects, led by Nietzsche on war. Part II looks at how these sophistical strategies are played out in two key passages in Nietzsche and Philosophy, concerning the second ‘selection’ in the eternal recurrence, with its ‘annihilation of all parasitical and degenerate elements’. Closing remarks address the situation today, and the paradoxes and limitations of Left Nietzscheanism in the academy.
Keywords
apologetics, catachresis, Deleuze, eternal recurrence, fallacies, Nietzsche, politics
Date
2021
Type
Journal article
Journal
Thesis Eleven
Book
Volume
163
Issue
1
Page Range
71-88
Article Number
ACU Department
School of Philosophy
Faculty of Theology and Philosophy
Faculty of Theology and Philosophy
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Open Access Status
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All rights reserved
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Controlled