I do not think it at all irrelevant that Nietzsche had trouble with women.
Couching the conversation in terms of his sexual experience reflects our
own predilictions to think of male/female relations in sexual terms and
underplays the importance of the issue. I'd rather develop this in
converation rather than as an essay so I'll begin with this.
Do you as easily reject Irigaray?
(from *Marine Lover*)
"And you had all to lose sight of me so I could come back, toward
you, with an other gaze.
"And, certainly, the most arduous thing has been to seal my lips,
out of love. To close off this mouth that always sought to flow free.
"But, had I never held back, never would you have remembered that
something exists which has a language other than your own. That, from her
prison, someone was calling out to return to the air. That your words
reasoned all the better because within them a voice was captive.
Amplifying your speech with an endless resonance.
"I was your resonance.
"Drum. I was merely a drum in your own ear sending back to itself
its own truth.
"And to do that, I had to be intact. I had to be supple and
stretched, to fit the texture of your words. My body aroused only by the
sound of your bell.
"Today, I was this woman, tomorrow that one. But never the woman,
who, at the echo, holds herself back. Never the beyond you are listening
to right now.
......"And yet I should still love you if to speak to you were possible.
"And yet I still love you too well in my silence to remember the
movements of my own becoming. Perpetually am I troubled, stirred, frozen,
or smothered by the noise of your death....."
Nietzsche's vision of women is idealistic and composed in his own mind for
his own purposes. Without the imprisoned voice of the woman who laughs,
Nietzsche (Zarathrustra) cannot achieve the ultimate overcoming and his
child will never be born. The effect of this on real women is to deny
them a subjective position. N's conception of a 'love' or a 'foe' is
self-referential. This *is* a Romantic notion of love. It is, in large
measure the modern notion of love...but that's a tangent.) Whether this is
predicated on a disastrous relationship is irrelevant. However, it is not
irrelevant that Nietzsche does not have an experience where he is
confronted with or accepts the subjectivity of (a) woman. She *must*
remain imaginary. A real woman would deprive us of the symbol of at least
Ariadne, if one believes Krell, and at worst, laughter.
Irigary's complaint is reasonable. We are not imaginary. And Nietzsche
is lovable, but only to a point. To go beyond that point is to subjugate
the material reality of being female to the notion of a cosmic
intelligence that is dominantely male. Real women could not laugh.
deaun moulton
deaun@unm.edu
--- from list nietzsche@lists.village.virginia.edu ---