It has been established -- clearly, in my my mind, that the magical allure that is undoubtably present in Nietzsche's writing is shamanistic. It is that which enables him to play the pied piper and to attract a following. Yet the shamanistic mode of logic -- although present -- is not as deep as it ought to be, were one to be truly faithful to the principles of shamanism. In precise terms: although the notion of plasticity of identity and self transformation is trumpeted, the degree of plasticity that is potentially available in each human being is portrayed as being much more limited than actually it is. Whereas changing genders is the ultimate expression of the logic of shamanism, Nietzsche's views that the gender roles ought to be fundamentally unassailable is directly in line with the logic of patriarchal priests throughout the ages.
And yet he uses shamanistic structures of thought -- which have a natural voluptuousness and sense of joyful celebration of the here and now -- to sell us on this gloomy patriarchal priest's ideas. UPDATED-- PERHAPS I WAS A BIT HARSH ON OLD NEECHY HERE, BUT I WAS BEING SORDIDLY ATTACKED BY MALE SUPREMICISTS CLOSE TO THE TIME I WROTE.
This is the contradiction within Nietzsche's work. Shamanism would totally free its initiates the constraints imposed by guilt, if not from guilt itself -- but Nietzsche wants a certain amount of freedom to be permitted, and no more.
He is like a wine merchant who has decided that his product isn't going far enough -- and so he dilutes his wine with methylated spirits.
But methylated spirits -- the priestly complex -- is actually poison. Specifically, it is a poison in the eyes of this particular wine merchant.
So how did he go wrong -- to mix in so much priestly doom and gloom into what were, and ought to have been, liberating ideas for his time?
UPDATED: Nietzsche once wrote, "Apart from the church, we too love the poison [of ascetic ideas]."
It seems that both Nietzsche and Bataille mixed their knowledge with a certain amount of religiosity -- poison -- in order to reach the widest possible audience.
4 comments:
Is it possible that we are viewing the edited works of an artist/Shaman who had to hide the sacred [Shamanism] inside the profane {the most negative limitations of Patriarchy} So that he could attract an audience to begin with?
Perhaps like some Buddhists, Nietzche saw the purpose in a lie that delivers transformation by expedient means.
He wouldnt be the first to water down his own words to make them more palatable to a potentially hostile but ripe audience.
Perhaps -- but I think it is more likely to do with his notion that the majority of people could not stand the kind of freedom that pure shamanism would produce for them. So he is standing in their way to freedom like a protective paternal figure, with the goal of creating a social system where three quarters of people remained in the thrall of psychological slavery to their masters.
He speaks about using traditional religious systems already in place to further the development of this kind of a society -- a meritocracy of a spiritual sort.
The logic of shamanism, however, is directly opposed to this kind of structural notion of society. Anybody who was born and nurtured by a parent can naturally access it as part of their birthright.
Sure, "facing death" is not everybody's cup of tea, and one perhaps needs a stronger than normal psychological constitution to be able to do it. (And reading Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche clearly thought that most ppl had a very weak psychological constitution and would be better off with conventional religion to stabilise them.)
Didn't he also have Issues around sex? This tends to make men patriarchal (not that not having Issues in that area makes them non patriarchal, of course).
I think he was a man of his time in that respect -- although IN THEORY he liked the Dionysian and the orgiastic.
Flora Veit-Wild says much the same thing about Marechera -- he was not very active sexually.
Post a Comment