Dislocations: Nietzsche, Autobiography, and the Writing of Bodily Events
Open Access
- Author:
- Shepherd, Melanie Jan
- Graduate Program:
- Philosophy
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- September 26, 2007
- Committee Members:
- Dennis Schmidt, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Charles Edward Scott, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Nancy A Tuana, Committee Member
Vincent M Colapietro, Committee Member
Jeffrey Nealon, Committee Member - Keywords:
- Nietzsche
autobiography
body
Klossowski
Ecce Homo - Abstract:
- In this dissertation, I look to Nietzsche’s autobiographical texts in order to develop an insight found in the work of Pierre Klossowski: a Nietzschean reading of Nietzsche should understand Nietzsche’s body as the locus of his thinking. Reading Nietzsche in this way leads to three central problems. First, Nietzsche understands his philosophical project as a liberation of the body from a history of asceticism, but he explicitly associates his own thinking with intense physical suffering. In considering this problem, we come to a second concern: Nietzsche evaluates his suffering body in a way that reinitiates a division of the spirit and body. While Nietzsche’s work is invested in the overcoming of such a division, his description of spiritual joy during times of physical agony leaves traces of the division within his text. Furthermore, Nietzsche’s suffering seems to be embraced for the sake of continuing to think and write, which gives a sacrificial logic to his thinking. This sacrifice for the sake of writing indicates that the body’s liberation and the self-overcoming of ascetic ideals cannot be understood to take place as singular events, but are rather dispersed through writing across space and time.