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Nietzsche's Corps/e: Aesthetics, Politics, Prophecy, or, the Spectacular Technoculture of Everyday Life (Post-Contemporary Interventions)

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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.

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.

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?

I used to think that Nietzsche was a dangerous thinker. Geoff Waite, by cutting straight to the core of Nietzsche's intentions (with no 'messing around' involved), blows the whole thing apart with a nuclear bomb.

There really is nothing more to say... this book is terrible (in an awesome way).
I haven't seen or looked at the world in the same way ever sinse I read it.
I'd love to see what would happen in the world if this book was more widely appreciated.
However, there is one thing that I do know: the struggle continues.
Nietzsche isn't dead? - He needs to die!

Where is Nietzsche today? He is hiding in your brain and in the cyberspace jungle, issuing commands to his faithful corps via his corpse become corpus become everyday life.

Waite's thesis is that Nietzsche's esoteric and indeed exoteric agenda is the extermination of the weak and the enslavement of the masses with the object of giving the elite male genius the time and the wealth to pursue his masturbational projects of self-creation and self-glorification. Decent people, communist or not, should (should you say?) have nothing to do with this murderous project. Leftists should find someone else to quote.

The most closely held premise of Nietzsche was (is) that some people are better than others and that society should be ordered accordingly. Now I don't see how anything, including superior power, could make someone objectively, metaphysically better than anyone else. But Nietzsche would unflinchingly reject the terms of my characterization. Or possibly just chase us angrily with his umbrella.

Unless you happen to be one of Nietzsche's Supermen (and you had really be sure that you actually are a Superman and not someone who has been unwittingly duped in to thinking that he is the Higher Man) then you ally yourself with Nietzsche at your own peril.

Now all of this may be hyperbole, but given what is at stake, hyperbole may be in order.

I bought this book with the honest wish to encounter a real criticism of Nietzsche's thought. I believe it is in the interest of us all, and especially of us Americans, for Socialism to take on this Herculean critic of itself and of the 'herd' in general. What I found was an encounter with a fantasy version of Nietzsche. This book is so wrong headed, from the perspective of someone who has real knowledge of Nietzsche's thought, that it produces wry smiles that decline into outright laughter at the obvious bloopers. Finally I am left with embarrassment at the level of scholarship coming from Cornell, and even praised on the back cover by professors from Princeton and Yale. The book is admirably footnoted but most of the sources are secondary to Nietzsche's writings and the many references to Nietzsche's ideas are rarely footnoted (and indeed they couldn't possibly be because they are often obviously wrong.) It is written in the obscure jargon that Foucault, Derrida, Heidegger, et al have made de rigueur in American graduate schools and is therefore difficult to understand without contorting oneself into a postmodern pretzel. I think, to end on a sort of positive note, it would make good fodder for a critique of the whole paranoid left, a left that was at the heart of the murder of socialism both from within and from without. So in a sort of negative move to optimism, and to steal a small amount of voltage and noise from the thunder and lightening of the(hopefully spurious) Left, go ahead and buy this book and use it as an object lesson on how not to write, how not to criticise Marx, Lenin, Lennon, Groucho, Nietzsche, or even your own mother let alone the Grand Dragon that this book tries to slay. "Nietzsche's position," this book proclaims fatuously, "is the only one outside of communism." What else can I say?

Waite brings to Nietzsche's band of followers a challenge and offense sure to leave eyes, ears, and noses stinging. If there is anyone to blam for the socalled 'death of communism' Waite would have us believe it was Nietzsche. This genius of esoterical manipulation breeds a corps of devoted followers who dominate the intelligentia, academia, and especially popular culture- so much so that Nietzsche's corpse has lefts its trace everywhere. And wherever you find traces of his corpse, you find a political agenda of radical conservatism equipped with slaves, racial breeding, and not a little weeding out of the undesirables; all endorsed, unwittingly and via subliminal, subrational, and subcutaneous esoterrorism by a brood of Nietzschoid liberals and Nietzschean conservatives. This book is a decelebration of Nietzsche's 100 anniversary of his buried corpse- a war of sorts to bury the corpus that has captured the corps of scholars and intelligencia who march merrily into his hard, all too hard vision of the future of the human race.

A Marxist's wet dream, and Nietzschean's worst nightmare

I wrote the following review, in haste, in 2000, but I'm going to resist the temptation to revise it: I'll add something at the bottom instead.

"I bought this book with the honest wish to encounter a real criticism of Nietzsche's thought. I believe it is in the interest of us all, and especially of us Americans, for Socialism to take on this Herculean critic of itself and of the 'herd' in general. What I found was an encounter with a fantasy version of Nietzsche. This book is so wrong headed, from the perspective of someone who has real knowledge of Nietzsche's thought, that it produces wry smiles that decline into outright laughter at the obvious bloopers. Finally I am left with embarrassment at the level of scholarship coming from Cornell, and even praised on the back cover by professors from Princeton and Yale. The book is admirably footnoted but most of the sources are secondary to Nietzsche's writings and the many references to Nietzsche's ideas are rarely footnoted (and indeed they couldn't possibly be because they are often obviously wrong.) It is written in the obscure jargon that Foucault, Derrida, Heidegger, et. al. have made de rigueur in American graduate schools and is therefore difficult to understand without contorting oneself into a postmodern pretzel. I think, to end on a sort of positive note, it would make good fodder for a critique of the whole paranoid left, a left that was at the heart of the murder of socialism both from within and from without. So, to make a negative move to optimism, and to steal a small amount of voltage and noise from the thunder and lightening of the(hopefully spurious) Left, go ahead and buy this book and use it as an object lesson on how not to write, how not to criticize Marx, Lenin, Lennon, Groucho, or even your own mother let alone the Grand Dragon Nietzsche that this book tries to slay. "Nietzsche's position," this book proclaims fatuously, "is the only one outside of communism." What else can I say?"

"Nietzsche's Corps/e" is not a study of Nietzsche's thought but of the Nietzsche effluvia that has reached American shores from the rotting corpses of Bataille, Baudrillard, Foucault, Deleuze, and other Frenchmen, and above all, from the corpse of Jacques Derrida.

The French, of course, are capable of reading Nietzsche with clarity and insight. (Nietzsche thought of France as the center of Western Civilization and counted on finding his best readers there.) In fact, Michel Haar, a Frenchman, has written an excellent analysis of Nietzsche's philosophical thought called "Nietzsche and Metaphysics" which I recommend as a counterbalance to the above mentioned French pop-star-philosopher, byzantine rants and sometimes pornography that Waite and his heroes pummel us with. You can find it on Amazon Nietzsche and Metaphysics (Suny Series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy)

For a balanced view of Nietzsche's historical setting and political views, I recommend two books. The first, by a historian, is Peter Bergmann's Nietzsche, "the Last Antipolitical German"

The second examines Nietzsche's political views and is written by a political scientist, Leslie Paul Thiele. It is called Friedrich Nietzsche and the Politics of the Soul: A Study of Heroic Individualism