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November 18, 2003
It is very hot in Adelaide tonight. There is little wind to cool things down. I am in despair and yearn for the crashing thunderstorms and the cooling rain. All I have is the flow of the warm north wind through the shutters on my windows I am too tired to deal with the heat of my blood rage.
I'm finding it very hard to concentrate working through Bataille's 'Preface' in his On Nietzsche.
What I am able to discern through the debilitating heat is that Bataille sees Nietzsche's texts as his companions. Nietzsche speaks to him as he uses the word 'we'. He understands himself as engaged in a conversation with Nietzsche's texts.
I come across this passage from the Preface which indicates how Bataille understands this 'conversing.'
"I want to be very clear about this: not a word of Nietzsche's work can be understood without experiencing that dazzling dissolution into totality, without living it out. Beyond that this philosophy is just a maze of contradictions."
I have no idea what Bataille means by totality at this stage. So let me come back to 'conversation'.
Gilles Deleuze in Dialogues 11 says that conversation is a rupture from the traditional idea of philosophy inventing problem positions, finding solutions, responding to objections and getting out of the difficulties. Conversations, in contrast, are about becomings and these are about "orientations, directions, entries and exits." Conversations are an outline of a becoming.
Deleuze connects this with new and good ways of reading and writing. He says:
"....the good ways of reading today would succeed in treating a book as you would treat a record you listen to, a film or a TV programme you watch;any treatment of the book which claims for it a special respect---an attention of another kind----comes from another era and definitely condemns the book."
It is just a note.
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