Although Nietzsche’s fragmentary and ambiguous writings have not
infrequently been subjected to what we can call a ‘deconstructive’ reading (by
Jacques Derrida in Spurs, Paul De Man
in Allegories of Reading, Phillippe
Lacoue-Labarthe in ‘The Detour’ and ‘Apocryphal Nietzsche’, for instance), they
have nonetheless been comparatively untouched by a specifically Lacanian
psychoanalysis. Not any more: Alenka Zupanic’s The Shortest Shadow: Nietzsche’s Philosophy
of the Two is — caveat lector —
almost as much about Lacan as it is
about Nietzsche himself. The fairly lengthy appendix, by means of illustration,
is not connected with Nietzsche at all. And some of the themes and figures of
the book arguably owe more to the concerns of modern French philosophers such
as Badiou or the (later) Deleuze than they do to Nietzsche himself (the
notorious Heideggerean interpretation of Nietzsche is not relied upon,
however). Prospective readers of The
Shortest Shadow might like to know this broadly Lacanian orientation prior
to purchase, as it is not really suggested by the title. Now, the encroachment
of Lacanian themes into Nietzsche may, no doubt, be seen by some potential
readers as a bit of an intrusion. But is it a fruitful one?

   
To some extent, yes: on the positive side, Zupanic covers a wide range
of Nietzsche’s texts in The Shortest
Shadow, unusually including his poetry as well as his prose in her comprehensive
reading. And her analysis of the later Nietzsche on the ‘ascetic ideal’ was
incisive, bringing the notion to bear on modern cultural preoccupations in a
highly plausible way. Also, her knowledge of the Lacan corpus is impressive and
she writes in an unlaboured style throughout. Plus, she references contemporary
art and culture in a frequently accessible way. On the negative side, though,
there are what this reviewer regards as certain
inaccuracies of Nietzsche-interpretation. For example, in the course of
examining various of Nietzsche’s theories and ideas, Zupanic’s
conviction (meant as support for the idea that Nietzschean subjectivity is
split in two), that there is no relation between Dionysis and ‘the Crucified’
(both of whom Nietzsche identified with, p.18, suggesting a fissure in ‘his’
subjectivity), though perhaps understandable in that it follows Deleuze’s influential monograph on Nietzsche as well as
Nietzsche’s own misleading self-interpretation in Ecce Homo, is nonetheless mistaken, as, for the early Nietzsche,
Dionysis and the Crucified are surprisingly very closely related (on this see,
for example, M. S. Silk and J. P. Stern, Nietzsche
on Tragedy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 121, 213 and
287; in addition, J. Young, Nietzsche’s
Philosophy of Art (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 49). Also,
Zupanic’s position that ‘Nietzsche defines nihilism
as the psychological state that makes us search for meaning or sense in
everything that happens’ (p.153) would seemingly include Christians as
nihilists, whereas in fact for Nietzsche European nihilism begins after, and precisely because of, the decline of
faith in the Christian God (the first sections of the collection of
posthumously published notes by Nietzsche assembled under the title The Will to Power make this clear). It
is the underlying feeling of meaninglessness, and not the simple desire for
meaning, which characterises nihilism. Also, Zupanic’s
characterisation of the notorious ‘slave revolt in morals’ described in Beyond Good and Evil and particularly in
On the Genealogy of Morality as the ‘masters’
giving names and the ‘herd’, on the other hand, fighting ‘for the interpretation of these names’ (p.44)
seemed to me to be a completely unsustainable position as a reading of
Nietzsche. After all, it is the slaves and not the masters who are said by
Nietzsche to invent the very designation ‘evil’. Moreover, Nietzsche says in
the first essay of On the Genealogy of
Morality: ‘The
herd instinct […] finally gets its word in (and makes words)’ [Diethe
translation, Cambridge University Press, p.13]. Nietzsche further writes that
the slave revolt in morals is a ‘workshop where ideals are fabricated‘ [Ibid. p.31]. It follows from such remarks
as these by Nietzsche that, contra
Zupanic, the herd are not only just as linguistically and conceptually
inventive as the masters; they are much
more so.

   
Furthermore, Zupanic’s statement that ‘knowledge
is structured like desire […] Every new discovery is
thus accompanied by the feeling that […] it is always possible to go further’
(p.106) seems similarly unNietzschean. For Nietzsche, the notable
characteristic of knowledge is that it is felt as a stable foundation by its
seekers: it is seen as an intrinsic good, valuable in itself; an unconditioned
reality external to people that will function as a final place of contemplative
rest (I have borrowed heavily here from the analysis in Peter Poellner’s most meticulously argued Nietzsche and Metaphysics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995)
pp.114-117). Indeed, at one point in On
the Genealogy of Morality Nietzsche refers to ”knowledge’, ‘truth’, ‘being’,
as an escape from every aim, every wish’ [Diethe
translation, pp.103-104]. Nietzsche’s claim that ‘knowledge’ is an escape from
every aim, every wish seems, to say the least, irreconcilable with Zupanic’s Lacanian remark that ‘knowledge
is structured like desire’.

    
Doubtful interpretations of Nietzsche such as those mentioned above
seemed to this reviewer to mar the project of jointly reading Lacan and
Nietzsche, perhaps even to suggest that there is little in the way of
philosophical relation between the two authors. For Nietzsche, Dionysis and the
crucified are not necessarily always to be seen as testimony to a split; and
knowledge is more like an anaesthetic than a desire. Nevertheless, should
readers who are already positively oriented toward Lacan wish to see Nietzsche
read alongside Lacan, The Shortest
Shadow: Nietzsche’s Philosophy of the Two accomplishes the task deftly, and
in some style, although, as I have suggested, arguably at a cost to the precise
recovery of Nietzsche’s own energetically disturbing thought.

© 2004
Matthew Ray

 Matthew Ray, Bristol, UK

Categories: Philosophical, Psychoanalysis