Nietzsche Within the Left: The Methods of Foucault & Deleuze vs. Huey Newton
Deep Dives
Explore related topics with these Wikipedia articles, rewritten for enjoyable reading:
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Huey P. Newton
14 min read
Newton's reading of Nietzsche is central to the article's argument about alternative philosophical methods. His role as Black Panther Party co-founder and his intellectual framework in Revolutionary Suicide provides crucial context for understanding how political activists engaged with European philosophy differently than academic postmodernists.
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Ressentiment
11 min read
The article mentions 'Overcoming the Ressentiment Complex' as an upcoming session topic. This Nietzschean concept of reactive emotional attitude and slave morality is fundamental to understanding the political readings of Nietzsche discussed, particularly how Foucault, Deleuze, and Newton each interpreted this core element of his philosophy.
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The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
11 min read
Session IV addresses 'Nietzsche and Marx on Bonapartism.' Marx's famous analysis of Louis Bonaparte's 1851 coup is essential context for understanding how both thinkers analyzed political authoritarianism and class dynamics, a key intersection point for the Marxist historical materialist method the author advocates.
My seminar, “Nietzsche’s Theoretical Surplus” with the School of Materialist Research is becoming publicly available. In the first session, which I released last week, I look at four predominant reading methods that philosophers take to Nietzsche. I introduce and advocate for the method of what I call ‘theoretical surplus’, which I associate with a historically and politically engaged method that is largely influenced by Marxist historical materialist methods of reading Nietzsche.
In the second seminar, I turn to an analysis of the postmodern method of reading Nietzsche (hermeneutics of innocence) that we find in Foucault and Deleuze. I examine Nietzsche’s views on a wide range of issues and concepts from culture, the state, power, socialism, to the pathos of distance and I show how Foucault and Deleuze interpret these same topics and issues. I argue that both thinkers develop a distinct—yet similar—reading method that completely decontextualizes Nietzsche’s political content and thereby erases the reactionary core of his thought. Building off the work of Jan Rehmann, I argue that this apolitical and ahistorical method of reading and interpreting Nietzsche’s thought compromises the political core of both Foucault and Deleuze. I then analyze the way that Huey Newton’s reading of Nietzsche differs from both thinkers and points to a more compelling method of reading Nietzsche’s politics, but one that is not without its own problems.
Readings for session II:
Daniel Tutt, How to Read Like a Parasite (chapter 5)
Jan Rehmann, Deconstructing Postmodernist Nietzscheanism (excerpts)
Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy (excerpts)
Huey Newton, Revolutionary Suicide (excerpts)
Stay tuned for the final two sessions in this series which will be released over the next month.
Session III: Overcoming the Ressentiment Complex
Session IV: Nietzsche and Marx on Bonapartism
Session I: Nietzsche’s Politics: Between Proto-Fascism and Left-Libertinism" is available here:
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