{"id":849,"date":"2016-10-19T11:16:46","date_gmt":"2016-10-19T15:16:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/nietzsche1313\/?p=849"},"modified":"2016-10-19T11:23:28","modified_gmt":"2016-10-19T15:23:28","slug":"barbara-stiegler-what-is-tragic-a-few-questions-on-the-deleuzian-interpretation-of-the-eternal-return","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/nietzsche1313\/barbara-stiegler-what-is-tragic-a-few-questions-on-the-deleuzian-interpretation-of-the-eternal-return\/","title":{"rendered":"Barbara Stiegler: WHAT IS TRAGIC? A few questions on the Deleuzian interpretation of the eternal return"},"content":{"rendered":"

Before I begin, I would like to sincerely thank Bernard E. Harcourt, Jesus R. Velasco, and their whole team for this invitation. After many years work, following behind Foucault, on the birth of American neo-liberalism, your invitation gave me a wonderful excuse to dive back into Deleuze during the vibrancy, both here in the USA and in France, that was the 1960s. Following a long voyage through the dark interwar years, it was a bit like jumping into a fountain of youth! And so the first aim of my talk will be to recall how and why Nietzsche\u2019s thought came into contact with the\u00a0liberating exuberance of the 1960s America. I could mention the conference of 1966 held at John Hopkins University, Baltimore (1). I could also mention John Rachjman, present here today, and the journal Semiotexte(e) <\/em>which he oversaw here in Columbia beginning in the Seventies. One of its watchwords was that \u201cNietzsche\u2019s return\u201d should be the \u201cclarion call of the counter-culture\u201d (2), an ambition Deleuze adopted to the letter (3).<\/p>\n

But the second aim of my contribution will be to show that Nietzsche\u2019s centrality during the 60s and 70s materialized at the cost of certain misinterpretations, particularly on the part of Deleuze, regarding the meaning of the tragic and of the eternal return. To show this, I will concentrate on two sets of problems. Firstly; the Deleuzian interpretation of The Birth of Tragedy<\/em>. On this point, I will argue that Deleuze\u2019s anti-Hegelianism led him to empty Nietzsche\u2019s concept of the tragic of its essential element, namely, the experience of the negative. I will then show how this initial misinterpretation created a second divergence between Nietzsche and Deleuze regarding the role of memory, spanning from the first forms of organic life up to the mass media, in the concept of the eternal return. A twofold divergence which, as I will outline in my conclusion, leads to political consequences which are just as radically divergent.<\/p>\n

The \u201creturn to Nietzsche\u201d in and through Sixties liberation<\/em><\/h3>\n

But before anything else, we have to begin by remembering that Foucault and Deleuze had a central role in Nietzsche\u2019s \u201credemption\u201d, only fifteen years after the fall of the Third Reich. While Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari were finally establishing a reliable edition of the Posthumous Fragments, Foucault and Deleuze took part with them in the important Colloque de Royaumont on Nietzsche in 1964 and then collaborated in the French translation publication of the Colli-Montinari edition, published from 1967 on. Thanks to this invaluable collective endeavor, the 1960s constituted not only a redemption but also this veritable \u201creturn to Nietzsche\u201d that Foucault and Deleuze so desired (4).<\/p>\n

From Foucault, there was of course the famous ending of Les mots et les choses <\/em>(The Order of Things<\/em>) which, in 1966, took up the Nietzschean declaration of the \u201cend of man.\u201d Philosophy was no longer to take man as its starting point, not even disguised as a transcendental subject, an idea Deleuze himself echoed in 1968 in Diff\u00e9rence et r\u00e9p\u00e9tition<\/em>. Philosophy would have to decenter towards its exterior, to expose itself to \u201cinsanity\u201d (Histoire de la philosophie<\/em> [Madness & Civilization<\/em>]) and to \u201cdifference\u201d (Diff\u00e9rence et r\u00e9p\u00e9tition<\/em>). This interpretation was confirmed in Foucault\u2019s earliest lectures at the Coll\u00e8ge de France at the beginning of the 1970s, his Le\u00e7ons sur la volont\u00e9 de savoir <\/em>(Lessons on the will to knowledge<\/em>). Nietzsche is presented as the philosopher who broke away from the tradition by looking to the Greeks and adopting their tragic theme of a truth that exceeds knowledge – a formidable \u201cexteriority\u201d or \u201coutside\u201d which philosophy, as a Gay Science<\/em>, must dare to face. This is the nature of the first Nietzschean liberation: to release us from the Kantian bind of the transcendental subject and expose us to a chaotic reality, not yet tamed by science or reason, spilling over beyond the scope of our knowledge. \u201cLimit-philosophy\u201d (5), the limit-experience of an outside, just like that relentlessly sought in the 1960s: to be experienced, to be enhanced, facing the risk of meltdown.<\/p>\n

Foucault\u2019s other notable text on Nietzsche is, of course, the homage to Jean Hyppolite from 1971 where Nietzschean genealogy is seen to supplant the Hegelian historicity of dialectics. Here, \u201ccauses\u201d and \u201cends\u201d are together dissolved and diffracted within a field of dispersed forces. Every arrow pointing to an origin, to a stable, identical and identifiable cause, be it an end or some absolute term, reveals itself to be a fiction that masks an effective becoming<\/em>. Like Deleuze\u2019s, Foucault\u2019s Nietzsche clearly releases us from both the bind of the self-constituting subject (Kant) and the teleological aims of dialectics (Hegel, Marx). In fact, these are precisely the central themes of the Deleuzian reading of Nietzsche in the 1960s. The Preface of Diff\u00e9rence et r\u00e9p\u00e9tition <\/em>aims to show that these two liberations follow each from the other. First liberation: \u201cThe primacy of identity […] defines the world of representation. But modern thought is born of the failure of representation, of the loss of identities, and of the discovery of all of the forces that act under the representation of the identical.\u201d (6). For Deleuze, Nietzsche is both the herald of this \u201cmodern thought\u201d and the first to understand that this first liberation from the binds of the identical (from Plato to Kant) gave rise, by the same movement, to the second liberation, from the binds of the negative (from Hegel to Marx): \u201cWe propose to think difference in itself independently of the forms of representation which reduce it to the Same, and the relation of different to different independently of those forms which make them pass through the negative.\u201d (6; and 7 to 9). However, my own reading of Nietzsche led me to two radically divergent conclusions. When we read The Birth of Tragedy<\/em>, is it the world of representations that collapses? Quite the contrary! And in closely analyzing Nietzsche\u2019s accounts of biology and their part in the conception of the eternal return, there just is no dissolution of Identity or the Same!<\/p>\n

First divergence:\u00a0 Apollo as \u201cconceptual figure\u201d (10), or necessary representation<\/em><\/h3>\n

The Deleuzian reading, as a whole, is built on the disqualification of The Birth of Tragedy<\/em>. In fact, something resists his interpretative hypothesis. Something, or rather some one: the god Apollo, to whom Deleuze is at great pains to attribute even the smallest legitimacy. And for good reason! Apollo is the god of representation, placing us in the \u201cworld of representation\u201d whose collapse Nietzsche is supposed to be pronouncing but which Apollo nevertheless deifies as necessary. While Deleuze\u2019s reading must be praised for grasping the central role of Dionysus throughout Nietzsche\u2019s work, a hypothesis which I share in my book Nietzsche et la critique de la chair <\/em>(Nietzsche and the critique of the flesh<\/em>), this came at the price of banishing Apollo, an error I endeavored to correct in the same book.<\/p>\n

By reading the many, many posthumous fragments from the 1880s where Nietzsche himself was re-reading The Birth of Tragedy<\/em>, I showed that he assigned to Apollo a \u201cfundamental thought<\/strong>\u201d of which \u201c[his] life thereafter [was] the consequence\u201d: the necessity of representation (11). For Nietzsche, as for Schopenhauer before him, the full and whole experience of the totality of life, meaning the sum of all the joys and all the sufferings experienced by the living, is utterly unbearable, impossible to live. But in contrast to Schopenhauer, Nietzsche concludes from this that it is impossible to continue to oppose life (i.e. the Dionysian continuum of the Will) and representation (i.e. the Apollinian discontinuity, the principle of individuation). On the contrary, the Dionysian life is possible only if it places itself at a distance, within the Apollonian representation: in \u201crepresentations (Vorstellung<\/em>) with which life can be lived.\u201d(12) Rather than making the Kantian world of representation collapse, as Deleuze believed, Nietzsche instead reveals the Dionysian core that makes it necessary<\/em>, imposing in a way what I have called a \u201creverse transcendental deduction\u201d that roots representation and all of its fictions in the vital over-saturation of suffering and of joy (13) There may well be an opening to the outside of representation, but it is this outside itself which, far from dissolving it, states the necessity of representation.<\/p>\n

Perceiving none of this \u201cfundamental thought\u201d in the Birth of tragedy<\/em>, Deleuze arbitrarily reduces it to the metaphysical oppositions found in Schopenhauer (14). For Deleuze, there is fundamentally only one \u201cWho\u201d:\u00a0 Dionysus (15). Individuals do not at all emerge from Apollo but from \u201cthe individuating factors […] which constitute the fluid world of Dionysus\u201d(16), individuating factors which, far from producing subjects, instead lead to the dissolution of any form of I or self. For Nietzsche, on the contrary, the multiplicity and difference of all individuals between themselves derives from the tension and interrelation between two \u201cWho\u201ds: Dionysus and Apollo. But although Deleuze correctly identifies Dionysus as a central \u201cconceptual figure\u201d(10), he attributes no philosophical substance to Apollo. When he notes that Leibniz and then Hegel tried to cause \u201ca little of Dionysus\u2019s blood to flow in the organic veins of Apollo\u201d(17), this is again in order to fold the organic and organized Apollonian body back under the dominion of representation and reason. In this image, with the actual blood of Dionysus circulating outside of Apollo\u2019s \u201corganic veins\u201d, outside of the organization of organs, we already seem to have the outline of a certain \u201cnon-organic\u201d Dionysian life theme, a life experienced by a \u201cbody without organs.\u201d(18) But, The Birth of Tragedy <\/em>proposes quite the opposite idea: life can only be experienced in Apollo\u2019s organs, or more accurately, at the limit of his organs and the frontier of his figures, a life that both demands organization and forever overflows it, threatens it, and ultimately transforms it. Where Nietzsche describes a tension-bound interrelation between two \u201cWho\u201ds, Deleuze hardens the (Schopenhauerian) opposition between a single \u201cWho\u201d (the Will as Leib<\/em>, organ-less living body, Dionysus) and a simple \u201cWhat\u201d (representation as K\u00f6rper<\/em>, organism or organized body, Apollo).<\/p>\n

Refusing to consider the link and tension between Dionysus and Apollo, Deleuze is forced to caricature their relationship. The irreducible element of suffering in every process of individuation, the necessary product of this insurmountable tension between limit and excess, is unfairly presented as a relic of Hegelian dialectics and its Christian roots (19, 20). Arbitrarily reducing the entirety of the negative to the dialectical, Deleuze was led to impose this false idea that Nietzsche\u2019s first Dionysus, still marked by the negative, by dialectics and its sad passions, was later surpassed by a new Dionysus of pure joy, much closer to the Spinozist interpretation of the body and the affects, and one that is finally rid of Apollo: \u201can affirmative thought, a thought which affirms life and the will to life, a thought which finally expels the whole of the negative. […] We have not understood that the tragic is pure and multiple positivity, dynamic gaiety.\u201d(21) This misinterpretation is reinforced, throughout Nietzsche et la philosophie<\/em>, by the constant opposition of active joy and reactive suffering.<\/p>\n

Second divergence:\u00a0 Ariadne as second conceptual figure, or the great politics of memory<\/em><\/h3>\n

It could be objected that, at the end of the day, if there is a misinterpretation, well, it only involves Nietzsche\u2019s first book and one marginal conceptual figure (Apollo) who then disappears anyway. But I have argued that in the 1880s, Apollon was not just de \u201cfundamental thought\u201d. Far from having disappeared, he somehow metamorphosized into a new conceptual figure: Ariadne, Dionysus\u2019 fianc\u00e9e. Unlike with Apollo, Ariadne\u2019s importance did not escape Deleuze. But he interpreted her as a divine figure, simply echoing or reflecting, like in a \u201cmirror\u201d, the Dionysian affirmation with a second affirmation.(22) Nietzsche, however, interprets Ariadne not as a goddess but as Dionysus\u2019 favorite human animal, with all the technical brilliance of her tools (Ariadne\u2019s thread) and her organs (her little ears).(23) Instead of the eternal return arising in immediacy, or through the singular \u201cWho\u201d of Dionysus, it actually results from a twofold condition <\/em>and a series of mediations<\/em>: from the loves of Dionysus and Ariadne and from her (which is to say, from our<\/em>) ability to organize the excess of Dionysian flux by incorporating it into ourselves, into the labyrinthine lines and folds of our memory. Where Deleuze\u2019s Nietzsche dissolves all form of mediation in an organ-less body that is \u201cplugged\u201d im<\/em>-mediately into the outside, Nietzsche\u2019s Dionysus actually calls out for the organizing mediations of Apollo and then later Ariadne.(24) He has no need for a dissolved self or an organ-less body or any mere mirror of his joy. What he needs is another \u201cWho\u201d, capable of receiving him, supporting him, and incorporating him into its own body by means of the artifices of representation and the organs of memory, to the point of desiring its eternal return to the identical<\/em>. Here, neither the negative nor the small nor the \u201cressentiment<\/em>\u201d are expelled.(25) Instead, it is a matter of successfully swallowing and digesting them, managing eventually to affirm them, something which can be achieved only through long training: only through education.<\/p>\n

All of the texts I studied in researching Nietzsche et la biologie <\/em>confirm this interpretation of Ariadne. In them, Nietzsche systematically associates life and memory, memory and organization. Indeed, all life begins with both the passive suffering from an element that affects it and with the active reorganization of that element within its memory. Like the tragic stage, organic memory implies a twofold condition: passive exposure to something that exceeds it (the absolute flux of becoming) and the active reorganization of this wound by the assimilating forces of identity (the artificial production of stases). It is this twofold condition which produces the labyrinthine and plastic folds of memory, woven out of all these tensions between the old and the new. Like those between Dionysus and Apollo, the tensions between passive exposures to alterity (the flux) and active reorganizations by identity (the stases) remain, for Nietzsche, insurmountable. They lead him to argue that every living being, because it is suffering<\/em>, because it suffers from the excessiveness of what happens to it, is already a subject that produces conscience, fictions, and necessary representations.(26) From this point of view, the 1960s in general and Deleuze in particular were wrong to read Nietzsche as either dissolving or denouncing identity. A \u201cFractured I\u201d(27), yes, in the sense that all organic identity of the I is forever fractured or wounded by the excess of Dionysus and by the threatening, abrupt arrival of difference, a medium term forewarning of its necessary death to come. But \u201cdissolved self\u201d? No, in the sense that the Nietzschean philosophy of the body is wholly guided, up to and including the philosophy of the eternal return, by the necessity of the incorporation, organization, and assimilation of the flux into the stases of the organism which, alone, enable the transition from pure difference to individuation. As with representation, Nietzsche contests only (and this sums up his entire rupture with metaphysics) that identity can be self-founded upon a denial of its overflow, of what exceeds it, and of what needs it (*).<\/p>\n

What is still to be understood is the emergence of Ariadne, that human animal who loved and was loved in return by Dionysus. On this point, it is another theme dear to the 1960s that we have to probe: the \u201cdeath of man.\u201d Beside the death of man and his probable dissolution, Nietzsche envisioned another path: the loves of man and of Dionysus, but on condition<\/em>. On condition that living bodies learn to incorporate the flux of becoming, on condition that they learn to organize it within the lines and folds of their memory, to the point of loving it, to the point of wanting its eternal return to the identical. And this, to conclude, is what leads me to what Nietzsche considered to be the greatest political question: the question of education, of training, of the collective creation of organs of memory.<\/p>\n

Political conclusions: Nietzschean Great Politics or Deleuzian micro-politics?<\/em><\/h3>\n

My hypothesis is that the philosophy of the eternal return, rather than corresponding to an ontology of difference, is a response from god and from man <\/em>(i.e. from Dionysus and from Ariadne) to an unprecedented situation created by the explosion of the mass media in the 19th century, a response that still awaits its formulation: \u201cwe hear full well the hammering of the telegraph but do not understand it.\u201d(28) What the hammering of the telegraph produces is in fact a very dangerous reversal: for the first time in their history, the organs of memorization (what would from now on be called the media) would no longer protect us from the absolute flux, quite the contrary. Whereas, up to this point, their purpose was to filter the flux, stabilize and slow it down to allow us to incorporate it and learn to love it, from now on they would expose us without mediation to the chaos of its contradictions, of its differences and accelerations. Now the \u201cmedia\u201d would create the continuous experience of immediacy, with its strange mix of jubilation and distaste towards the continuous flux of becoming and its \u201cnews.\u201d<\/p>\n

A host of new illnesses would flow out of this reversal, over-running both art and education. Although the media should be kept under the authority of art and its techniques of incorporation (Ariadne\u2019s little ear), the romantic and Wagnerian art of Nietzsche\u2019s century would allow itself to be progressively governed by the prestissimo <\/em>of the media, by its shock aesthetics and its imitation of the absolute flux in which all forms and all identities are dissolved. Beyond the art of the artists, it was all institutions of culture, education and training which, according to Nietzsche, were allowing themselves to be dominated by this shock aesthetics. Against this (recent and romantic) experience of being unconditionally plunged into the flux of becoming, we have seen that Nietzsche, through the twofold condition of Dionysus\/Apollo and then Dionysus\/Ariadne, relentlessly opposed the necessity to invent new organs of incorporation capable of filtering the absolute flux by forcing new forms and new rhythms upon it. It is these forms and rhythms, however, these complex and sophisticated means to a slow digestion of the flux, which today find themselves under attack from all angles in the name of speed, directness, reflex reactions to events, all working to produce bodies that are both electrified and disorganized. In this unprecedented situation, to which no living body has ever been exposed in the history of life, Nietzsche\u2019s profound conviction was that it had become possible that no event would ever again touch us, that nothing more <\/em>would ever strictly touch us. This possibility (the nihil of<\/em> both \u201cnihilism\u201d and the \u201clast man\u201d), in Nietzsche\u2019s view, places a heavy responsibility upon us: that of reorganizing ourselves by reorganizing the media forms through which we receive the flux. Beside what I have called its \u201ctherapeutic\u201d task, this is for Nietzsche the \u201cpedagogic\u201d task of the Great Politics.(29) Upon this task depends the possibility that a genuine history of events, rather than an atomized series of shocks and dissolutions, may still happen to us.<\/p>\n

Which leads me, in conclusion, to two questions. Firstly: in this Nietzschean political project of a collective reeducation of the human animal and its incorporating capacities, is there not a fundamental divergence with the Deleuzian micro-politics that calls for the dissolution of identities, for the disorganization of living bodies, and for the liberation of \u201caberrant movements\u201d? (30) And secondly: if we agree that this divergence exists, which of these politics do we need today (one or the other, both, or neither?) in order to resist the twofold assault, so well described by both Deleuze and Foucault, of capitalism and neoliberalism?<\/p>\n

\n

Quotations<\/strong><\/p>\n

(1) \u00ab\u00a0Nietzsche en est venu \u00e0 occuper la position centrale qui \u00e9tait depuis les ann\u00e9es 1930 celle du Hegel fran\u00e7ais\u00a0\u00bb\u00a0; ou encore\u00a0: dans \u00ab\u00a0les \u0153uvres r\u00e9centes de Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze [\u2026] tout [\u2026] appartient \u00e0 Nietzsche\u00a0\u00bb (Richard Macksey & Eugenio Donato, The Struturalist Controversy<\/em>, p.XII., cit\u00e9 in Fran\u00e7ois Cusset, French Theory<\/em>, p.39-40).<\/p>\n

(2) \u00ab\u00a0Nous avons d\u00e9cid\u00e9 que Fred devait faire un retour dans le r\u00f4le de clairon de la contre-culture\u00a0\u00bb (Semiotext(e)<\/em>, \u00ab\u00a0Nietzsche\u2019s Return\u00a0\u00bb, p.\u00a05).<\/p>\n

(3) \u00ab\u00a0Marx et Freud sont peut-\u00eatre l\u2019aube de notre culture, mais Nietzsche, c\u2019est tout \u00e0 fait autre chose, l\u2019aube d\u2019une contre-culture\u00a0\u00bb (Deleuze, \u00ab\u00a0Pens\u00e9e nomade\u00a0\u00bb, L\u2019Ile d\u00e9serte et autres textes<\/em>, p.352\u00a0; trad. anglais in Semiotext(e)<\/em>, \u00ab\u00a0Nietzsche\u2019s Return\u00a0\u00bb, \u00ab\u00a0Nomad Thought\u00a0\u00bb p.13).<\/p>\n

(4)\u00a0\u00ab\u00a0Nous souhaitons que le jour nouveau, apport\u00e9 par les in\u00e9dits, soit celui du retour \u00e0 Nietzsche\u00a0\u00bb (Deleuze & Foucault, \u00ab\u00a0Introduction g\u00e9n\u00e9rale\u00a0\u00bb aux \u0152uvres philosophiques compl\u00e8tes<\/em> de\u00a0Nietzsche, p. IV).<\/p>\n

(5) \u00ab\u00a0Cette \u00e9tude aurait pu s\u2019appeler Deleuze philosophie-limite\u00a0<\/em>\u00bb (David Lapoujade, Deleuze, les mouvements aberrants<\/em>, p.292).<\/p>\n

(6) \u00ab\u00a0Le primat de l\u2019identit\u00e9 [\u2026] d\u00e9finit le monde de la repr\u00e9sentation. Mais la pens\u00e9e moderne na\u00eet de la faillite de la repr\u00e9sentation, comme de la perte des identit\u00e9s, et de toutes les forces qui agissent sous la repr\u00e9sentation de l\u2019identique\u00a0\u00bb (Deleuze, Diff\u00e9rence et r\u00e9p\u00e9tition<\/em>, p.1)<\/p>\n

(7) \u00ab L\u2019Identique ne revient pas. Le M\u00eame et le Semblable, l\u2019Analogue et l\u2019Oppos\u00e9 ne reviennent pas. Seule l\u2019affirmation revient, c\u2019est-\u00e0-dire le Diff\u00e9rent, le Dissimilaire [\u2026]. Et comment le lecteur pourrait-il croire que Nietzsche impliquait dans l\u2019\u00e9ternel retour le Tout, le M\u00eame, l\u2019Identique, le Semblable et l\u2019Egal, le Je et le Moi, lui qui fut le plus grand critique de ces cat\u00e9gories\u00a0?\u00a0\u00bb (Diff\u00e9rence et r\u00e9p\u00e9tition<\/em>, p.383).<\/p>\n

(8) \u00ab\u00a0Ce que l\u2019\u00e9ternel retour \u00e9limine, c\u2019est pr\u00e9cis\u00e9ment toutes les instances qui jugulent la diff\u00e9rence, qui en arr\u00eatent le transport en la soumettant au [\u2026] joug de la repr\u00e9sentation\u00a0\u00bb (Diff\u00e9rence et r\u00e9p\u00e9tition<\/em>, p.384).<\/p>\n

(9) \u00ab\u00a0Ce que [l\u2019\u00e9ternel retour] \u00e9limine, c\u2019est le M\u00eame et le Semblable, l\u2019Analogue et le N\u00e9gatif comme pr\u00e9suppos\u00e9s de la repr\u00e9sentation\u00a0\u00bb (Diff\u00e9rence et r\u00e9p\u00e9tition<\/em>, p.383).<\/p>\n

(10) \u00ab\u00a0[\u2026] les personnages conceptuels, chez Nietzsche et ailleurs, ne sont pas des personnifications mythiques [\u2026]. [Ce sont] des puissances de concept\u00a0\u00bb. (Deleuze & Guattari, Qu\u2019est-ce que la philosophie\u00a0?<\/em>, p.63-64).<\/p>\n

(11) \u00ab\u00a0[\u2026] \u2018\u2018sie haben erkannt, und es ekelt sie zu handeln\u2019\u2019 p 35 Geburt der Trag\u00f6die<\/em>. \u2018\u2018sie rettet die Kunst \u2013 und durch die Kunst rettet sie sich das Leben\u2019\u2019 Grundgedanke<\/strong>. Mein weiteres Leben ist die Consequenz\u00a0\u00bb [\u00ab\u00a0\u2018\u2018Ils ont connu, et cela les d\u00e9go\u00fbte d\u2019agir\u2019\u2019 p.35 Naissance de la trag\u00e9die<\/em>. \u2018\u2018L\u2019art les sauve \u2013 et par l\u2019art, c\u2019est la vie qui se les sauve\u2019\u2019. Pens\u00e9e fondamentale<\/strong>. Toute ma vie ensuite en est la cons\u00e9quence\u00a0\u00bb] (Nietzsche, Nachgelasse Fragmente,<\/em> 1883 16[11], p.501, trad. mod. p.522-523).<\/p>\n

(12) \u00ab\u00a0[\u2026] die wahre Erkenntnis, der Einblick in die grauhafte Wahrheit \u00fcberwiegt jedez zum Handeln antreibende Motiv [\u2026] bei dem dionysischen Menschen. Jetzt verf\u00e4ngt kein Trost mehr, die Sehnsucht geht \u00fcber eine Welt nach dem Tode [\u2026]. Hier, in dieser h\u00f6chsten Gefahr des Willens, naht sich, als rettende, heilkundige Zauberin, die Kunst\u00a0<\/em>; sie allein vermag jene Ekelgedanken \u00fcber das Entsetzliche oder Absurde des Daseins in Vorstellungen umzubiegen, mit denen sich leben l\u00e4\u00dft\u00a0\u00bb [\u00ab\u00a0[\u2026] la connaissance vraie, le coup d\u2019\u0153il dans l\u2019horreur de la v\u00e9rit\u00e9 l\u2019emporte [\u2026] chez l\u2019homme dionysiaque sur tous les motifs \u00e0 agir. D\u00e8s lors, aucune consolation n\u2019op\u00e8re plus, la nostalgie aspire \u00e0 un monde apr\u00e8s la mort [\u2026]. C\u2019est ici, dans ce plus grand danger pour la volont\u00e9, que s\u2019approche l\u2019art,<\/em> tel un magicien qui sauve et qui gu\u00e9rit\u00a0; lui seul est \u00e0 m\u00eame de plier cette pens\u00e9e de d\u00e9go\u00fbt pour l\u2019horreur et l\u2019absurdit\u00e9 de l\u2019existence \u00e0 se transformer en repr\u00e9sentations avec lesquelles la vie peut \u00eatre v\u00e9cue\u00a0\u00bb] (Nietzsche, Geburt der Trag\u00f6die<\/em>, \u00a7 7, p.57, trad. mod. p.70).<\/p>\n

(13) \u00ab\u00a0Nietzsche [op\u00e8re] ce que nous proposons d\u2019appeler une d\u00e9duction transcendantale \u00e0 l\u2019envers. Ici, ce n\u2019est plus des conditions de possibilit\u00e9 de l\u2019objet (Kant), mais des caract\u00e8res intrins\u00e8ques du sentir (Nietzsche) que d\u00e9coule la n\u00e9cessit\u00e9 de la repr\u00e9sentation et de l\u2019\u00eatre-objet. [\u2026] Ce qui est nouveau par rapport \u00e0 Kant, c\u2019est que c\u2019est en explorant le fond de la passivit\u00e9 du souffrir que Nietzsche d\u00e9couvre un appel aux forces spontan\u00e9es du sujet, c\u2019est-\u00e0-dire d\u2019abord \u00e0 ses forces spontan\u00e9es de gu\u00e9rison. La racine commune, il faut dor\u00e9navant aller la chercher l\u00e0 o\u00f9 la chair souffre et se gu\u00e9rit d\u2019elle-m\u00eame\u00a0: du c\u00f4t\u00e9 des conditions de possibilit\u00e9 de la vie et non plus sur le seul terrain de la science\u00a0\u00bb (Barbara Stiegler, Nietzsche et la critique de la chair. Dionysos, Ariane, le Christ<\/em>, p.86)<\/p>\n

(14) \u00ab\u00a0On le voit encore chez Schopenhauer, ou m\u00eame dans le premier Dionysos, celui de la Naissance de la trag\u00e9die\u00a0<\/em>: leur sans fond ne supporte pas la diff\u00e9rence\u00a0\u00bb (Deleuze, Diff\u00e9rence et r\u00e9p\u00e9tition<\/em>, p.354).<\/p>\n

(15) Qui\u00a0? trouve son instance supr\u00eame en Dionysos et dans la volont\u00e9 de puissance\u00a0\u00bb (Deleuze, Nietzsche et la philosophie<\/em>, p.88).<\/p>\n

(16) \u00ab\u00a0La grande d\u00e9couverte de la philosophie de Nietzsche, sous le nom de volont\u00e9 de puissance ou de monde dionysiaque, celle qui marque sa rupture avec Schopenhauer, est celle-ci\u00a0: sans doute le Je et le moi doivent \u00eatre d\u00e9pass\u00e9s dans un ab\u00eeme indiff\u00e9renci\u00e9\u00a0; mais cet ab\u00eeme n\u2019est pas un impersonnel ni un Universel abstrait, par-del\u00e0 l\u2019individuation. Au contraire, c\u2019est le Je, c\u2019est le moi qui sont l\u2019universel abstrait. Ils doivent \u00eatre d\u00e9pass\u00e9s, mais par et dans l\u2019individuation, vers les facteurs individuants qui les consument, et qui constituent le monde fluent de Dionysos. L\u2019ind\u00e9passable, c\u2019est l\u2019individuation m\u00eame. Au-del\u00e0 du moi et du Je, il y a non pas l\u2019impersonnel, mais l\u2019individu et ses facteurs, l\u2019individuation et ses champs, l\u2019individualit\u00e9 et ses singularit\u00e9s pr\u00e9-individuelles\u00a0\u00bb (Diff\u00e9rence et r\u00e9p\u00e9tition<\/em>, p.332).<\/p>\n

(17)\u00a0\u00ab\u00a0Le plus grand effort de la philosophie consista peut-\u00eatre \u00e0 rendre la repr\u00e9sentation infinie (orgique). Il s\u2019agit d\u2019\u00e9tendre la repr\u00e9sentation jusqu\u2019au trop grand et au trop petit de la diff\u00e9rence\u00a0; de donner une perspective insoup\u00e7onn\u00e9e \u00e0 la repr\u00e9sentation, c\u2019est-\u00e0-dire d\u2019inventer des techniques th\u00e9ologiques, scientifiques, esth\u00e9tiques qui lui permettent d\u2019int\u00e9grer la profondeur de la diff\u00e9rence en soi\u00a0; de faire que la repr\u00e9sentation conqui\u00e8re l\u2019obscur\u00a0; qu\u2019elle comprenne l\u2019\u00e9vanouissement de la diff\u00e9rence trop petite et le d\u00e9membrement de la diff\u00e9rence trop grande\u00a0; qu\u2019elle capte la puissance de l\u2019\u00e9tourdissement, de l\u2019ivresse, de la cruaut\u00e9, m\u00eame de la mort. Bref, il s\u2019agit de faire couler un peu de sang de Dionysos dans les veines organiques d\u2019Apollon. Cet effort a p\u00e9n\u00e9tr\u00e9 de tout temps le monde de la repr\u00e9sentation. Devenir orgique est le v\u0153u supr\u00eame de l\u2019organique, et de conqu\u00e9rir l\u2019en soi. [\u2026] cet effort eut deux moments culminants, avec Leibniz et avec Hegel\u00a0\u00bb (Diff\u00e9rence et r\u00e9p\u00e9tition<\/em>, p.337)<\/p>\n

(18) \u00ab\u00a0[\u2026] un pur fluide \u00e0 l\u2019\u00e9tat libre et sans coupure, en train de glisser sur un corps plein. Les machines d\u00e9sirantes nous font un organisme\u00a0; mais au sein de cette production, dans sa production m\u00eame, le corps souffre d\u2019\u00eatre ainsi organis\u00e9, de ne pas avoir une autre organisation, ou pas d\u2019organisation du tout [\u2026]. \u2018\u2018Pas de bouche. Pas de langue. Pas de dents. Pas de larynx. Pas d\u2019\u0153sophage. Pas d\u2019estomac. Pas de ventre. Pas d\u2019anus.\u2019\u2019<\/em> Les automates s\u2019arr\u00eatent et laissent monter la masse inorganis\u00e9e qu\u2019ils articulaient. Le corps plein sans organes est l\u2019improductif, le st\u00e9rile, l\u2019inengendr\u00e9, l\u2019inconsommable. Antonin Artaud l\u2019a d\u00e9couvert l\u00e0 o\u00f9 il \u00e9tait, sans forme et sans figure. Instinct de mort, tel est son nom. [\u2026] Aux flux li\u00e9s, connect\u00e9s et recoup\u00e9s, [le corps sans organe] oppose son fluide amorphe indiff\u00e9renci\u00e9\u00a0\u00bb (Deleuze & Guattari, L\u2019Anti-\u0152dipe<\/em>, p.14-15).<\/p>\n

(19) \u00ab\u00a0La contradiction, dans l\u2019Origine de la trag\u00e9die<\/em>, est celle de l\u2019unit\u00e9 primitive et de l\u2019individuation, du vouloir et de l\u2019apparence, de la vie et de la souffrance. Cette contradiction \u2018\u2018originelle\u2019\u2019 porte t\u00e9moignage contre la vie, elle met la vie en accusation\u00a0: la vie a besoin d\u2019\u00eatre justifi\u00e9e, c\u2019est-\u00e0-dire rachet\u00e9e de la souffrance et de la contradiction. L\u2019Origine de la trag\u00e9die<\/em> se d\u00e9veloppe \u00e0 l\u2019ombre de ces cat\u00e9gories dialectiques chr\u00e9tiennes\u00a0: justification, r\u00e9demption, r\u00e9conciliation\u00a0\u00bb. \u00ab\u00a0[\u2026] la vraie opposition n\u2019est pas l\u2019opposition toute dialectique de Dionysos et d\u2019Apollon, mais celle, plus profonde de Dionysos et Socrate\u00a0\u00bb (Deleuze, Nietzsche et la philosophie<\/em>, p.13, 15).<\/p>\n

(20) \u00ab\u00a0In Wahrheit, es giebt zu der rein \u00e4sthetischen Weltauslegung und Welt-Rechtfertigung, wie sie in diesem Buche gelehrt wird, keinen gr\u00f6\u00dferen Gegensatz als die christliche Lehre\u00a0\u00bb [\u00ab\u00a0En v\u00e9rit\u00e9, rien n\u2019est plus rigoureusement contraire \u00e0 l\u2019interpr\u00e9tation et \u00e0 la justification purement esth\u00e9tiques du monde enseign\u00e9es dans ce livre que la doctrine chr\u00e9tienne]\u00a0\u00bb (Nietzsche, \u00ab\u00a0Versuch einer Selbstkritik\u00a0\u00bb, \u00a7 5, Geburt der Trag\u00f6die<\/em>, trad. p.31).<\/p>\n

(21)\u00a0\u00ab\u00a0une pens\u00e9e affirmative, une pens\u00e9e qui affirme la vie et la volont\u00e9 dans la vie, une pens\u00e9e qui expulse enfin tout le n\u00e9gatif. [\u2026] On n\u2019a pas compris que le tragique \u00e9tait positivit\u00e9 pure\u00a0et multiple, gaiet\u00e9 dynamique\u00a0\u00bb (Deleuze, Nietzsche et la philosophie<\/em>, p.41).<\/p>\n

(22) \u00ab\u00a0Le couple divin, Dionysos-Ariane<\/em>. [\u2026] par rapport \u00e0 Dionysos, Ariane-Anima est comme une seconde affirmation. L\u2019affirmation dionysiaque r\u00e9clame une autre affirmation qui la prend pour objet. [\u2026] L\u2019affirmation premi\u00e8re est Dionysos, le devenir. L\u2019affirmation seconde est Ariane, le miroir, la fianc\u00e9e, la r\u00e9flexion\u00a0\u00bb Ariane (Nietzsche et la philosophie<\/em>, p.214-215, 217).<\/p>\n

(23) \u00ab\u00a0[Dionysos] sagte einmal\u00a0: \u2018\u2018unter Umst\u00e4nden liebe ich den Menschen \u2013 und dabei spielte er auf Ariadne an, die zugegen war –\u00a0: der Mensch ist mir ein angenehmes tapferes erfinderisches Thier, das sauf Erden nicht seines Gleichen hat, es findet sich in allen Labyrinthen noch zurecht [\u2026]\u2019\u2019\u00a0\u00bb [\u00ab [Dionysos] dit un jour\u00a0: \u2018\u2018dans certaines circonstances, j\u2019aime l\u2019\u00eatre humain \u2013 Dionysos faisait allusion \u00e0 Ariane, qui \u00e9tait pr\u00e9sente; \u00ab\u00a0L\u2019\u00eatre humain est pour moi un animal agr\u00e9able, courageux et inventif, qui n\u2019a pas son pareil sur la Terre, il retrouve son chemin dans n\u2019importe quel labyrinthe [\u2026]\u2019\u2019\u00a0\u00bb (Jenseits von Gut und B\u00f6se<\/em> \u00a7 295, p. 239, trad. mod. p.208).<\/p>\n

(24) \u00ab\u00a0Nietzsche [\u2026] fonde la pens\u00e9e, l\u2019\u00e9criture, sur une relation imm\u00e9diate avec le dehors [\u2026] Or\u00a0, brancher la pens\u00e9e sur le dehors, c\u2019est ce que \u00e0 la lettre les philosophes n\u2019ont jamais fait [\u2026]. Nietzsche, avec son \u00e9criture d\u2019intensit\u00e9s nous dit\u00a0: n\u2019\u00e9changez pas l\u2019intensit\u00e9 contre des repr\u00e9sentations\u00a0\u00bb (Deleuze, \u00ab\u00a0Pens\u00e9e nomade\u00a0\u00bb, p.356, 358).<\/p>\n

(25) \u00ab\u00a0[\u2026] il n\u2019est pas s\u00fbr du tout que la version que Deleuze propose de l\u2019\u00e9ternel retour soit nietzsch\u00e9enne. Il n\u2019est pas s\u00fbr en effet que l\u2019\u00e9ternel retour ait eu chez Nietzsche la fonction s\u00e9lective que Deleuze lui pr\u00eate. [\u2026] On peut se reporter \u00e0 l\u2019article d\u00e9cisif de P. D\u2019Iorio, \u2018\u2018L\u2019\u00e9ternel retour. Gen\u00e8se et interpr\u00e9tation\u2019\u2019 [\u2026] qui fait le point sur ces questions et revient sur la lecture deleuzienne\u00a0: \u2018\u2018il est inutile de rappeler que l\u2019image d\u2019une roue \u00e0 mouvement centrifuge et le concept d\u2019une repr\u00e9sentation qui expulse le n\u00e9gatif ne se trouve nulle part dans les textes de Nietzsche, et Deleuze, en effet, ne cite aucun texte \u00e0 l\u2019appui de cette interpr\u00e9tation\u2019\u2019\u00a0\u00bb (David Lapoujade, Deleuze, les mouvements aberrants<\/em>, p.87).<\/p>\n

(*) Later in life, Deleuze would say some striking poetic things about complaining, things curiously close to Nietzsche\u2019s Ariadne. In the Ab\u00e9c\u00e9daire<\/em>, when Claire Parnet expresses surprise that he passes his time complaining, Deleuze responds that to complain is fundamentally to express that we are exposed (and wish to continue being exposed) to something larger than us. To risk excess and suffer from it, without immediately collapsing under it. Exposing ourselves to chaos yet nevertheless persevering in our bodies and precarious organizations (organs, stases, habits). This is exactly the sense of suffering and the negative found in the tragic figure of Apollo and also in Ariadne\u2019s Complaint. It is on the oh-so narrow crest of this tension that, according to Nietzsche, all differences in value are decided. Yet, by opposing affirmation and the negative, joy and suffering, in a much more dualist fashion, the Deleuze of the 1960s unfortunately missed what was the very locus of the tragic, of the negative, and of philosophy itself in Nietzsche\u2019s eyes.<\/p>\n

(26) \u00ab\u00a0Es mu\u00df eine Menge Bewu\u00dftseins und Willen\u2019s<\/em> in jedem complizirten organischen Wesen geben\u00a0: unser oberstes Bewu\u00dfstein h\u00e4lt f\u00fcr gew\u00f6hnlich die anderen geschlossen. Das kleinste organische Gesch\u00f6pf mu\u00df Bewu\u00dftsein und Willen haben\u00a0\u00bb [\u00ab\u00a0Il doit y avoir une multitude de consciences et de volont\u00e9s<\/em> dans tout \u00eatre organique compliqu\u00e9\u00a0; notre conscience \u00e0 l\u2019\u00e9tage sup\u00e9rieur tient les autres habituellement sous clef. La plus petite cr\u00e9ature organique doit avoir de la conscience et de la volont\u00e9\u00a0\u00bb] (Nietzsche, Nachgelassene Fragmente<\/em> 1884 25[401], p.116, trad. mod. p.133).<\/p>\n

\u00ab\u00a0Das Ich-Geistige<\/em> selber ist mit der Zelle schon gegeben\u00a0\u00bb [\u00ab\u00a0Le Je-spirituel<\/em> lui-m\u00eame est d\u00e9j\u00e0 donn\u00e9 avec la cellule\u00a0\u00bb] (Nachgelassene Fragmente<\/em> 1884 26[36], p.157, trad. mod. p.180).<\/p>\n

\u00ab\u00a0Ausgangspunkt vom Leibe<\/em> und der Physiologie\u00a0: warum\u00a0? \u2013 Wir gewinnen die richtige Vorstellung von der Art unser Subjekt-Einheit\u00a0\u00bb [\u00ab\u00a0Partir du corps<\/em> et de la physiologie\u00a0: Pourquoi\u00a0? Nous gagnons ainsi la repr\u00e9sentation (Vorstellung<\/em>) exacte de notre esp\u00e8ce d\u2019unit\u00e9 subjective\u00a0\u00bb] (Nachgelassene Fragmente<\/em> 1885 40-21, trad. mod. p.375).<\/p>\n

(27) \u00ab\u00a0[\u2026] l\u2019individu en intensit\u00e9 ne trouve son image psychique, ni dans l\u2019organisation du moi, ni dans la sp\u00e9cification du Je, mais au contraire dans le Je f\u00eal\u00e9 et dans le moi dissous, et dans la corr\u00e9lation du Je f\u00eal\u00e9 avec le moi dissous\u00a0\u00bb (Deleuze, Diff\u00e9rence et r\u00e9p\u00e9tition<\/em>, p.332).<\/p>\n

(28) \u00ab\u00a0Wir h\u00f6ren wohl das H\u00e4mmern des Telegraphen aber verstehen es nicht\u00a0\u00bb [\u00ab\u00a0Nous entendons bien le mart\u00e8lement du t\u00e9l\u00e9graphe, mais nous ne le comprenons pas\u00a0\u00bb] (Fragment posthume<\/em> 1877 22[76], p.392). NB\u00a0: d\u2019autres textes sur ce th\u00e8me sont cit\u00e9s dans mes deux contributions \u00ab\u00a0Le mart\u00e8lement du t\u00e9l\u00e9graphe\u00a0\u00bb et \u00ab\u00a0On the future of our incorporations. Nietzsche, Media, Events\u00a0\u00bb (en ligne sur le website Nietzsche 13\/13).<\/p>\n

(29) \u00ab\u00a0La question de la politique th\u00e9rapeutique des chairs conduit immanquablement au probl\u00e8me de leur organisation collective. Comment la chair doit-elle s\u2019organiser \u2013 dans le temps, dans l\u2019espace, dans le dispositif de ses artifices, dans la production de ses fictions, dans ses modes collectifs d\u2019incorporation, d\u2019\u00e9ducation et de dressage \u2013 pour continuer \u00e0 recevoir l\u2019exc\u00e8s du flux\u00a0? Quelle doit \u00eatre la politique de l\u2019incorporation du flux dans les chairs pour qu\u2019elles parviennent \u00e0 l\u2019aimer plut\u00f4t qu\u2019\u00e0 le ha\u00efr comme elles le font \u2013 soit en le d\u00e9niant (m\u00e9taphysique de la ma\u00eetrise), soit en esp\u00e9rant sa fin dans un avenir sans contradiction (eschatologie chr\u00e9tienne), soit en surench\u00e9rissant sur sa d\u00e9sorganisation (nihilisme passif)\u00a0? A la lumi\u00e8re de la critique de la chair, la question politique devient, contre la m\u00e9taphysique et le christianisme qui refusent d\u2019en assumer la t\u00e2che, le probl\u00e8me de l\u2019organisation des conditions pour la r\u00e9ception du flux. Il ne s\u2019agit plus ici d\u2019abord. Il ne s\u2019agit plus ici d\u2019abord de faire l\u2019unit\u00e9 de la cit\u00e9, ou de r\u00e9unir les conditions de la \u2018\u2018libert\u00e9\u2019\u2019, de \u2018\u2018l\u2019\u00e9galit\u00e9\u2019\u2019 et de la \u2018\u2018fraternit\u00e9\u2019\u2019 de ses membres, ou encore de se r\u00e9approprier les moyens de production, mais de faire que la sensibilit\u00e9 (r\u00e9ceptrice) de la chair s\u2019organise (activement) pour recevoir l\u2019exc\u00e8s du flux. La question politique de la critique de la chair devient l\u2019obligation\u00a0que la sensibilit\u00e9 s\u2019organise. A travers cet imp\u00e9ratif, c\u2019est la question de la politique p\u00e9dagogique des chairs<\/em> qui est pos\u00e9e\u00a0\u00bb (Barbara Stiegler, Nietzsche et la critique de la chair<\/em>, p.382).<\/p>\n

(30) \u00ab\u00a0Ce qui int\u00e9resse avant tout Deleuze, ce sont les mouvements aberrants\u00a0\u00bb (David Lapoujade, Deleuze, les mouvements aberrants<\/em>, p.9).<\/p>\n

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Bibliography<\/strong><\/p>\n