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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Trouble w/ Nietzsche, November 18, 2001
Waite's book illustrates a series of "problems" with Nietzsche and Nietzschean-ism: 1/ The Big Lie; 2/ The Double Code; 3/ The Master/Slave Thing; 4/ The So-Called Secret Agenda; 5/ The Will to Power; 6/ The Hellenic Thing; and 7/ The Proto-Postmodernism. It avoids 8/ The Migraines and the Pain, a subject belaboured by Pierre Klossowski in Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle (1969). An initial reading of both Geoffrey Waite's masterful tirade against the Nietzscheans, Nietzsche's Corps/e, and Pierre Klossowski's (in)famous Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle suggests damning evidence of a misappropriation of Nietzsche (most tellingly by poststructuralists and the Left). Waite points to a very famous symposium, held in July 1972 at Cerisy-la-Salle (Normandy) and attended by the illuminati of the French structuralist-poststructuralist camp (Derrida, Nancy, Klossowski et alia), as the time and place that Klossowski first 'broadcast' his idea of the "secret" Nietzsche. Waite's book is a demolition of this edifice constructed by the French illuminati and a denunciation of Nietzsche Himself by way of a high-rhetorical romp through the drug-like nature of Nietzsche's thought: "Nietzsche is a type of H/Meth, arguably the major type of post/narcotic 'quiver between history and ontology'." Waite is quoting Avital Fonell's "Our Narcotic Modernity" from Rethinking Technologies (1993) and setting the stage for his investigation of how Nietzsche's writings insinuate themselves into consciousness without necessarily being processed by the rational vectors of the brain. Waite's premise is that Nietzsche indeed, pace Klossowski, encoded a subliminal message into his work. The Genealogy of Morals (1887) and The Gay Science (1882) - plus Thus Spake Zarathustra (1883-85) - are the principle examples of this narcotic prose style. Perhaps the most rewarding portion of Waite's book is the section "Nietzsche's Esoteric Semiotics", wherein he takes on Klossowski's reading (and therefore the structuralist-poststructuralist camp en masse) and goes about the ravishing analysis of the so-called secret agenda. Nietzsche, it would seem, is the true avatar of postmodernism (nihilism and/plus relativism) and purposely buried his message in the paradoxical, ironic posturing of his works. His message is, in Waite's reading, proto-deconstructivist and attempts to condition all possible futures. Nietzsche has become second nature to our collective postcultural selves - essentially self-deconstructing selves - underwriting almost every discourse that pretends to demolish power in the name of heterogeneity. Perhaps Waite is at his best when he is positing what has been lost; i.e., a possible communism and/or a possible utopian project called enlightenment. Nietzsche, in other words, demolished all pretexts that might underwrite such an agenda.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Most Frightening Question that Can't be Asked, April 8, 2005
This review is from: Nietzsche's Corps/e: Aesthetics, Politics, Prophecy, or, the Spectacular Technoculture of Everyday Life (Post-Contemporary Interventions) (Paperback)
Waite sets us up for a full explication/penetration of the most destructive Nietzsche virus yet imagined. It should be asked, however, whether he is truly trying to destroy/discredit Nietzsche/anism or create/make stronger the very virus he discovers/invents. This question may not be asked, that of the author's intention, as it pertains to Nietzsche or to Waite. Waite makes writing/reading into a psychotic activity. More frightening is that even my own attempt to discredit Waite's reading only makes stronger, or increases the power of it.
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Promissory Note That Will Likely Never Be Made Good, July 23, 2006
This review is from: Nietzsche's Corps/e: Aesthetics, Politics, Prophecy, or, the Spectacular Technoculture of Everyday Life (Post-Contemporary Interventions) (Paperback)
This book is hands down the most intelligent left-wing book on Nietzsche in existence! Waite correctly dismisses the playful postmodern Nietzsche of dance and mask worshipped by soi-disant intellectuals and thus gets far closer to the heart of Nietzsche's purpose than they ever do. Waite is unafraid to ask the question who should rule. Also, unlike virtually all 'leftish' Nietzschean commentators Waite is very familiar with the esoteric nature of Nietzsche's writings. He has married the politico-philosophical esoteric readings of Leo Strauss with the revolutionary ideals of Marxism and has given us the only left reading of Nietzsche that is worth reading twice. It now seems, ten long years after the publication of this book, that this marriage between Marxism and esotericism is going to produce no heirs. Which is a pity; I would very much like to have seen a comparison of the dialectical method and the esoteric method that is not simply a hatchet job. By that I mean I would very much like to have seen a study that compares esoteric and dialectical thought written by someone who is adept -and recognized as such by all practitioners- in both these extraordinary philosophical methods. ...But it now seems likely that this will never be. Why? I would begin to answer that question by noting how remarkable it is that the none of the earlier reviews of this extraordinary book even mentioned Leo Strauss. But, as anyone who has read this book knows, the Straussian understanding of philosophical texts is crucial to Waite's argument. So why this silence among reviewers? One of the problems, if not the main problem, is that in a propaganda war one is at pains to either downplay or ignore the acute contributions to thought of ones enemies. The danger, intelligently alluded to in an earlier review, is that rather than making 'Nietzscheanism' weaker, all Waite has done, by making Nietzsche seem so intelligent and interesting, is make him stronger. In a similar manner and for similar reasons, much of the left would rather ignore Strauss, or excoriate him, rather than present him in an intelligent manner. Now, these are tactical issues that I do not pretend to be competent to judge, but I will point out that all tactical concerns are temporary and local. If the Marxist-esotericism that Waite here pioneers is a genuine contribution to thought (i.e., if both the esoteric reading of texts à la Leo Strauss and Marxist dialectic are indeed genuine contributions) then it would be sheer madness to ignore either Waite or Strauss. It was Merleau-Ponty, I believe, who once observed quite correctly, in the heat of a similar ideological confrontation, that 'we must not leave our enemies any good ideas'. If Merleau-Ponty is correct in this, that it is always a long-term strategic mistake, for what is at bottom momentary tactical considerations, to ignore genuinely intelligent contributions of enemies then Waite's contribution has been foolishly ignored by the left. But if you believe that long-term strategy is trumped by tactical concerns than Waite's book, regardless of the accuracy of his esoteric reading of Nietzsche, must be ignored. For myself, a mere observer of this conflict, I continue to hope for a confrontation and/or dialogue between the two greatest 'schools' of political philosophy - the dialectical and the esoteric - that is rigorous, critical and informed. ...But who ever really gets what they want?
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