2 - Nietzscheanism and poststructuralism

Summary

Every concept comes into being by making equivalent that which is non-equivalent. Just as it is certain that no leaf is ever exactly the same as any other leaf, it is equally certain that the concept “leaf” is formed by dropping these individual differences arbitrarily, by forgetting those features which differentiate one thing from another … Whereas every metaphor standing for a sensuous perception is individual and unique and is therefore always able to escape classification, the great edifice of concepts exhibits the rigid regularity of a Roman columbarium, while logic breathes out that air of severity and coolness which is peculiar to mathematics. … [C]oncepts … are only the left-over residue of a metaphor …

(TL I)

Nietzsche has the rare distinction of being associated not only with existentialism, but with its most important successor movement in twentieth-century continental philosophy, poststructuralism. Existentialism and phenomenology had declined significantly in popularity in France by the 1960s, owing in large part to its displacement by a revolutionary new movement sweeping the humanities: structuralism. By the late 1960s, however, a group of thinkers who came to be known in the English-speaking world as “poststructuralists” critically engaged structuralism (while also accepting some of its insights). Prominent among such thinkers were Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Luce Irigaray and Jean-François Lyotard. Nietzsche was an important influence on all of these thinkers, many of whom were instrumental in what has come to be known as the “Nietzsche revival” in France of the 1960s and 1970s.