Abstract
On a certain reading, the respective theories of Freud and Nietzsche might be described as exploring the suffered relational histories of the subject, who is driven by need; these histories might also be understood as histories of language. This suggests a view of language as a complicated mode of identifying-with, which obliges linguistic subjects to identify the non-identical, but also enables them to simultaneously identify with each other in the psychoanalytic sense. This ambivalent space of psychoanalytic identification would be conditioned by relational histories. On one hand, this might lead to conformity within a system of language as a shared, obligatory compromise formation that would defend against the non-identical; magical language, typified in Freud’s critique of animism and in Nietzsche’s critique of “free will” guided by absolute normative signifiers (“Good” and “Evil”), would be symptomatic of this sort of defense. On the other hand, given other relational histories, it may produce the possibility for more transitional modes of identification, and thereby modes of language that can bear its suffered histories, and lead to proliferation of singular compromise formations. It is suggested that while the former is historically dominant, Nietzsche and various psychoanalytic thinkers contribute to conceiving of the possibility of working ourselves towards the latter.
Highlights
The kinship between certain non-metaphysical aspects of Nietzsche’s thinking and that of Freud has been discussed by many commentators.2 Derrida, for example, sees both thinkers as precursors to Heidegger in their criticisms of self-certainty, based on the motif of différance.3 Such critics have found richer modes of thinking and writing than is evident from simplistic, metaphysical portrayals of libido theory or Will to Power, for example
The freedom from affect valorised by “higher” forms of culture which depend on the symbolization and sanctification of negation—philosophy, social sciences, law, journalism, politics, etc.—is symptomatic of the narcissistic need to defend oneself from suffered social history. This freedom is in effect a sort of compromise formation of the primary process, and is symptomatic of its own unbearable histories which are calcified within discursive subjects
One might read Freud’s diagnosis of philosophy as a form of animism within this framework, in so far as one of the most culturally-advanced forms of discourse is diagnosed as a compromise formation
Summary
The kinship between certain non-metaphysical aspects of Nietzsche’s thinking and that of Freud has been discussed by many commentators. Derrida, for example, sees both thinkers as precursors to Heidegger in their criticisms of self-certainty, based on the motif of différance. Such critics have found richer modes of thinking and writing than is evident from simplistic, metaphysical portrayals of libido theory or Will to Power, for example. It remains an animistic, magical freedom that is somehow imbued with a “feeling of truth”, acting as a defence mechanism On this reading, the freedom from affect (enabled by conformity to a fetishised system of language) valorised by “higher” forms of culture which depend on the symbolization and sanctification of negation—philosophy, social sciences, law, journalism, politics, etc.—is symptomatic of the narcissistic need to defend oneself from suffered social history. The freedom from affect (enabled by conformity to a fetishised system of language) valorised by “higher” forms of culture which depend on the symbolization and sanctification of negation—philosophy, social sciences, law, journalism, politics, etc.—is symptomatic of the narcissistic need to defend oneself from suffered social history This freedom is in effect a sort of compromise formation of the primary process, and is symptomatic of its own unbearable histories which are calcified within discursive subjects.
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