Hi Gary and Jo,
Here I am again after some time. I haven't been writing but I have been reading your correspondence everyday and keeping up with what is going on.
I mentioned when I last communicated that I was beginning to read Nietzsche & the Vicious Circle with a couple of other people. We are part of the way through chapter 5 at present. I read the book by myself once before and have read some parts more than once. I'm still trying to get a hold of it.
I am also reading Lacan with the people who are looking at Klossowski's book. If I could compare them as a place to start, I'd say that language is much more central to Lacan's thought, or better perhaps, that the instincts have less of a role. Lacan is concerned with the unconscious as a locus of scientific investigation. To the point we have read the book, it is not a major concern for Klossowski. There is some early focus in Klossowski's book on Nietzsche's bodily states, but this is preliminary to the main concern with thinking as fluctuations of intensity. Nietzsche's effort is to overcome individuality through this route, to continue as multiple identities - this is the sense Klossowski gives to the eternal return. As one of Karen Blixen's characters put it, 'I'm never going to be one person again!' See Lars Von Trier's The Idiots for the same idea.
How does this sound, you guys? There's obviously more to the book than I've said here but I can't remember everything at once. These are the ideas from the book that are occupying me at present. Nietzsche isn't unleashing a dialogue between the conscious and the unconscious; he is aiming beyond dialogue, beyond the self to direct sensuous existence.
Anyway, what do you guys think?
Posted by Trevor Maddock at December 6, 2004 09:12 AM | TrackBack