Читать книгу Baudrillard with Nietzsche and Heidegger: Towards a Genealogical Analysis - Vanessa Freerks - Страница 11

Secondary critics on Baudrillard, such as Mark Poster, stress that Baudrillard’s early work is an exercise in critical semiology. But they have not focused on the Nietzschean genealogical element of Baudrillard’s critique. In section 1.2, I show how Baudrillard gives an exposition of the Saussurean linguistic dynamics that constitute the consumer morality of late modernity.

In my view, a vital dimension of Baudrillard’s critique of structuralist semiology is that he applies the critical tools of genealogy to it in order to show that neither structural linguistics nor our current morality of consumption is atemporal, universal or natural. Let us now dig deeper into what Nietzsche’s genealogical work (and its French post-structuralist reception) has revealed for the study of language systems.

According to Foucault, Nietzsche was the “first to connect the philosophical task with a radical reflection upon language” (Foucault 1973, 305) and it is in his Nietzsche and Philosophy, that Deleuze (2006, 3) inaugurates the ‘linguistic turn’ in French Nietzsche reception:

“We will never find the sense of something …if we do not know the force which appropriates a thing, which exploits it, which takes possession of it or is expressed in it. A phenomenon is not an appearance or even an apparition, but a sign, a symptom which finds its meaning in an existing force. The whole of philosophy is a symptomatology, and a semeiology.”

A radical reflection upon language drives much of the First Essay of On the Genealogy of Morals and in the First Essay’s closing note in section 17, Nietzsche poses the following rhetorical question to advance the “historical studies of morality”: “What signposts does linguistics, especially the study of etymology, give to the history of the evolution of moral concepts?” (Nietzsche 2007, 34). Nietzsche’s “etymological point of view” seeks to highlight the trajectory of moral concepts (Nietzsche 2007, 13). Nietzsche traces the genealogy of moral concepts (Nietzsche 2007, 7).

In the First Essay of On the Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche writes that it is

“only the seduction of language (and the fundamental errors of reason petrified within it), which construes and misconstrues all actions as conditional upon an agency, a ‘subject,’ […]. But there is no such substratum; there is no ‘being’ behind the deed, its effect and what becomes of it; ‘the doer’ is invented as an after-thought, - the doing is everything” (Nietzsche 2007, 26).

In the above quote and elsewhere in On the Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche emphasizes that language seduces us into accepting all kinds of metaphysical presuppositions, such as the division between subject and object, cause and effects and he asks us to scrutinize our grammatical habits.

This does not mean that Nietzsche’s genealogical etymology aims to uncover the true and accurate meaning behind the “hieroglyphic script” (Nietzsche 2007, 7). A search for origins must involve the discovery of a “difference” at the origin, namely an origin that unsettles and challenges us to think differently. In the Preface to On the Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche makes it clear that he is dealing with morality as a “problem” (Nietzsche 2007, viii).

“In reality, I had set my heart on something much more important than the nature of the theories of myself or others concerning the origin of morality (or, more precisely, the real function from my view of these theories was to point to an end to which they were one among many means). The issue for me was the value of morality” (Nietzsche 2007, vi).

In this quote, Nietzsche claims that the question regarding the value of morality is his actual goal. Nietzsche’s historico-genealogical investigation of morality is functional – one tool among many for the serious question regarding the non-self-evident value of morality or in other words for the problematization of morality.

For Nietzsche, historical research must recognize that the origin of the development of any word or thing and its ultimate meaning or usefulness are altogether separate. This is because what exists is “continually interpreted anew … transformed and redirected to a new purpose” by a superior power (Nietzsche 2007, 50). Nietzsche goes against the assumption that the apparent purpose of a thing (“its utility, form and shape”) is the reason for its existence, for instance in the case of the eye that it was always made to see, or the hand to grasp. He argues against the view that we can consider “the ‘development of a thing’” in terms of a “progressus towards a goal, still less is it a logical progressus, taking the shortest route with least expenditure of energy and cost” (Nietzsche 2007, 51).

The teleological conception of development naively ignores the accidental and contingent aspects within the development of a thing, tradition or an organ:

“every purpose and use is just a sign that the will to power has achieved mastery over something less powerful, and has impressed upon it its own idea [Sinn] of a use function; and the whole history of a “thing”, an organ, a tradition can to this extent be a continuous chain of signs, continually revealing new interpretations and adaptations” (Nietzsche 2007, 51; italics and bold in the text)

The will to power unfolds in multiple ways and there is no single conclusive account because there are multiple perspectives that may be genealogically related but are never alike. Nietzsche challenges the assumption that there is a line of descent that can be continuously traced from a common ancestor, and that would enable one to derive moral notions and legal practices from a natural single and stable origin. Nietzsche emphasizes the changes, accidents, psychological innovations and moral inventions that arise within specific material and cultural contexts. Nietzsche does not simply oppose himself to the search for origins. He does want to show how the past continues in the present. Paul J. M. van Tongeren (2000, 204) explains genealogy as

“the method which describes phenomena as the products of a history of different and conflicting ways in which they are interpreted without there being a firm basis on which one could decide about the right interpretation. The genealogical basis is not an original truth behind all interpretations but it nevertheless is presupposed of those interpretations in a certain way. Genealogy points to struggle as the origin of everything: polemos patèr pantón”.

Genealogy “presupposes” a power struggle and Nietzsche focusses on the conditions under which a morality developed. The values of a particular moral system reside neither in a stable origin or end. Such a view prevents us from looking at the struggles for power that led to the emergence and establishment of a morality. As Deleuze also puts it:

“What directs us to the origin is the fact that every force is related to another, whether in order to command or to obey. The origin is the difference at the origin, difference in the origin is hierarchy, that is to say the relation of a dominant to a dominated force, of an obeyed to an obeying will” (Deleuze 2006, 7; italics in the text).

Nietzsche seeks to discover multiple origins and to classify and rank them (Kofman 1993, 87). Genealogy establishes distinctions “between epochs, peoples, grades of rank between individuals” (Nietzsche 2007, 5).

In the First Essay of On the Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche uses the story of masters and slaves to narrate the origin of our most basic moral values and he suggests a difference between the values “good and bad” and “good and evil”. Nietzsche thereby claims that there cannot be an original or true designation of value since the master and the slave always evaluate the world in different ways (White 1988, 684).

The masters’ use the term “good” to refer approvingly of their life and of themselves as people who are powerful enough to lead. The noble masters healthily celebrate their instinctual powers, expend their force without concern for utility or even the preservation of their life. According to the evaluative frame of reference by which the masters live, the term “bad” refers to those people – for instance, the “slaves” who cannot live a life of self-affirming physical dynamism.

“Good” and “bad” are two terms that constitute the basic code of “master” morality. In paragraph 10 of the First Essay, Nietzsche outlines the slave revolt against the masters’ form of valuation. Being physically inferior, the slaves take imaginary revenge on the masters against whom they are not strong enough to compete. This revenge involves the creation of an associated new form of valuation: “evil”. “Evil” now refers to the life the masters lead (which the masters themselves call “good”). In a “slave” morality, this negative term “evil” is central. Slaves define themselves by observing that they are “not like” the “evil” masters. For the slaves, “good” refers now not to a life of vitality and exuberance, but to one that is “not-evil”, i.e., not in any way like the life that the masters live.

Nietzsche (2007, 20; italics in the text) says

“Whereas all noble morality grows out of a triumphant saying “yes” to itself, slave morality says “no” on principle to everything that is “outside,” “other”, “non-self”: and this “no” is its creative deed. This reversal of the evaluating glance – this essential orientation to the outside instead of back onto itself – is a feature of ressentiment: in order to come about, slave morality first has to have an opposing, external world, it needs, physiologically speaking, external stimuli in order to act at all – its action is basically a reaction.”

Slave morality is a “reaction” to the ressentiment and discomfort the slaves feel towards their enemies, the aristocrats. Nobles have a different attitude towards their enemies. They regard their enemies as opportunities for new perspectives that can trigger self-overcoming; they respect their enemies as a chance for productive engagement. Nietzsche (2007, 21) observes “[h]ow much respect a noble man has for his enemies! – and a respect of that sort is a bridge to love” (Nietzsche 2007, 21). To embrace one's enemies illustrates the noble capacity to take distance from immediate stimuli; the incapacity to resist a stimulus is reactive.

The noble “pathos of distance” generates the “good/bad” valuation, whereas the “good/evil” value antithesis springs from slavish reactive ressentiment (Nietzsche 2007, 11-12). In the “good/evil” opposition, good is only the after-effect of a description that labels someone evil, which is primary. Nietzsche shows that unlike the active masters, the weak slaves can create their meanings “only by reaction, by inverting, disfiguring, and displacing the meaning attributed by the strong” (Kofman 1993, 87). In slave morality, the denigration of the other (the master) is the basis for the elevation of the self.

On the other hand, in “good/bad” noble morality, calling something good emerges affirmatively and independently. Genealogy reveals the dominance of a group of spontaneous and strong-willed forces such as the nobles, which are capable of generating new interpretations and new meanings. The distinction “good/bad” overcomes the oppositional morality of slaves (“good/evil”) because nobles affirm their own value as a source of self-overcoming.

It is important to emphasize however that the attitude of the masters towards the slaves is described by Nietzsche in an ambivalent fashion. The aristocratic attitude towards the slave is one of contempt (Nietzsche 2007, 20) but also “cheerfulness” (Nietzsche 2007, 20). The “bad” slaves are not directly criticized by the nobles, rather they are pitied (Nietzsche 2007, 20) and masterful “birds of prey” even (cynically perhaps) “love” little lambs (Nietzsche 2007, 26). Nietzsche adds that the word “bad” when applied by the masters to the slaves, possesses “kindly nuances” that one should not overlook (Nietzsche 2007, 20).

Nietzsche does not elevate the master as a straightforward ideal (Nietzsche 2007, 21). Nietzsche refers to the “activity” of the master as opposed to the “reactivity” of the slave, but Nietzsche also points to the cruel aspects of the master as a “blonde brute” and “beast of prey” (Nietzsche 2007, 15). Nietzsche does not seek to lament a lost origin and according to Richard White: “the terms Master and Slave refer to basic modalities, and in this respect, they are “types” which still concern us all” (White 1988, 683). It is difficult to be certain that Nietzsche effectively ‘praises’ the masters; his description might perhaps be value-neutral instead, in spite of the language he uses which apparently praises the masters and condemns the slaves.

Nietzsche makes it clear that without the slave, humanity would have remained an unreflective beast and would not have attained the height of culture that derives from controlling spontaneous instincts, which is why the aim of his ‘contempt’ might be rhetorical rather than substantive, i.e., independent of the content – the type of life – that is being described.

The point, I think, is that Nietzsche is contrasting different types of life. The way Nietzsche decides to assess ‘values’ is according to whether they have empowered or weakened the will to life. Nietzsche scrutinizes to what extent prevalent values promote or restrict life. The active creation of values associated with noble morality is life-affirming. On the other hand, the slaves are not only physically weak and oppressed, they are due to their weakness unable to spontaneously see themselves and their lives in an affirming fashion (Ansell-Pearson 2007, xxi).

Nietzsche is concerned with the evaluative modes that encompass human existence as certain presentations of the human “will to power”, which for Nietzsche is “the essence of life” (Nietzsche 2007, 52). As Martin Saar (2009b, 464) puts it: “Metaphysically, Nietzsche is a monist: power is everywhere. But as far as the forms of power go, Nietzsche is a pluralist: the various expressions of the will to power are its autonomous and independent articulations” (Saar 2009b, 464). The will to power unfolds in a variety of different ways and there are a multitude of perspectives – or ways of knowing.

In On the Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche stresses the importance of exploring different perspectives, drives, affects or passions. Nietzsche rejects the idea that there can be one account of truth that corresponds with the way things are in themselves, “independently of the mediation of perspectives by relations of willing” (Allsobrook 2009, 703). When claiming in the Third and Final Essay of On the Genealogy of Morals that philosophy must for the first time confront the question of the “value of truth”, Nietzsche (2007, 113) decides to analyze ‘truth’ within a complex social and political system.

Nietzsche (2007, 87) attacks an unconditional will to truth that claims to be free of conflicting interests that inform perspectives. It is in terms of the metaphor of “perspectival seeing” that Nietzsche offers his definition of objectivity, “having in our power the ability to engage and disengage our “pros” and “cons”: we can use the difference in perspectives and affective interpretations for knowledge” (Nietzsche 2007, 87; italics in the text).

Nietzsche refuses a final position transcending ongoing conflicts of perspectives and according to Allsobrook this serves to empower our sense of agency13 (Allsobrook 2009, 710). Nietzsche provides fictionalized hypothetical primal scenes that seek above all to problematise current habits, moral traditions and legitimation stories. Nietzsche encourages a re-evaluation of values, by presenting us with different perspectives, such as aristocratic morality.

According to Pawlett, Baudrillard follows Nietzsche with regards to the importance placed on the human self’s perspective, its self-identification through images and objects. It is our capacity to represent that produces the illusion of the real world, that is, a world as seen from God’s point of view, sub specie aeternitatis14 (Pawlett 2007, 58-59).

In my view, Baudrillard’s notion of “primitive” “symbolic exchange” like Nietzsche’s “noble morality” is precisely a fictionalized hypothetical primal scene that enables us to make sense of what we do and what we believe. Both notions are not meant to be representational or strictly true. Let me explain below.

In contrasting the exchange systems of primitive societies with capitalism, Baudrillard draws on the anthropological works of Marcel Mauss and Marshall Sahlins on the gift. Baudrillard contrasts the gift economy against capitalism because in the gift economy, exchanges are always symbolic. Baudrillard argues there is no such thing as an economy of use, need or necessity – there is always surplus, the extent and nature of which result from socio-political arrangements. In addition, “the symbolism of exchange means that it always represents the individual and his relations” (King 1998, 91). The secondary critic on Baudrillard’s work, Douglas Kellner (1989, 120) claims that

“Baudrillard attacks the bourgeoisie, capital political economy from the point of view which valorises “aristocratic” expenditure and sumptuary aesthetic symbolic values” (Kellner 1989, 43).

Kellner rightly identifies that Baudrillard provides a version of Nietzsche’s “aristocratic”, “master morality,” in which value articulates an excess, an overflow and intensification of life energies (Kellner 1989, 45).

However, for Kellner, the notion of symbolic exchange also reveals “something of an essentialist anthropology” because Baudrillard’s “celebration of symbolic exchange…emerges as a distinctive and privileged form of human activity” (Kellner 1989, 45). In the same vein, in his book Libidinal Economy, published in 1974, Lyotard (1993, 103 – 127) critiques Baudrillard’s apparent nostalgia for symbolic exchange. According to Lyotard, Baudrillard attempts to ground the idea of symbolic exchange in anthropological societies of primitive societies and is utopian.

It must be emphasized, against Kellner and Lyotard, that Baudrillard does not idealise15 symbolic society. Baudrillard uses symbolic society to multiply genealogical perspectives into our conception of moral values.

Douglas Kellner (1989, 120) claims that “whereas Nietzsche celebrated the sovereignty of the superior individual as the mode of transition to a higher stage of being, Baudrillard comes to attack the subject as such” (Kellner 1989, 120). Regarding Baudrillard’s views on the subject in consumer society specifically, Kellner states that by “presenting the concepts of needs and use values as solely the product of capitalism and political economy, Baudrillard is unable to articulate standpoints from which to criticize capitalist society or present oppositional consumer practises or politics, since in his view all consumption serves simply to integrate individuals into the system of needs and objects” (Kellner 1989, 36-37). In addition, Kellner claims that Baudrillard’s perspectives on needs and consumption are “one-sided and incomplete. For he is theorizing use-values and needs strictly from the standpoint of how they are perceived by capital and how capitalists might fantasise that they are actually producing use-values and needs” (Kellner 1989, 37).

Against Kellner, I think that Baudrillard does not deny the phenomenon of subjectivity. Baudrillard, like Nietzsche, is interested in dramatizing the genesis of the subject. Baudrillard’s genealogy of consumptive practices ‘recounts’, as does Nietzsche’s genealogy, in a hyperbolic16 and highly speculative way, a history of the self in the form of a history of power. Both Nietzsche and Baudrillard provide a practical conception of subjectivity, that is to say, a theory of historical variables, practices and procedures that give rise to subjectivity. Both Baudrillard and Nietzsche thematize the subject according to complex everyday practices, upon which self-understandings are built. Language, knowledge, power, art and bodily and consumptive practices are, from this perspective, not realms in which “ready-made” subjects act, but rather arenas that build the self.

In the next chapter, I will further develop the genesis of the subject as outlined in Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals. Nietzsche’s genealogy of the subject demonstrates the oppressive uses made of the idea of subjectivity as a basis for domination that invents the concept of responsibility and freedom to hold individuals accountable and judge them guilty. I will show how Nietzsche challenges the subject’s privileged status by looking at its life-negating uses. It will become clear that it is precisely Nietzsche’s account of the subject that leads Baudrillard to link the modern form of power with subjects and subjection to objects.