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“Keeping It in the Family”: Sarah Kofman Reading Nietzsche as a Jewish Woman

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 March 2020

Joanne Faulkner
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Abstract

This article examines Sarah Kofman's interpretation of Nietzsche in light of the claim that interpretation was for her both an articulation of her identity and a mode of deconstructing the very notion of identity. Faulkner argues that Kofman's work on Nietzsche can be understood as autobiographical, in that it served to mediate a relation to her self. Faulkner examines this relation with reference to Klein's model of the child's connection to its mother. By examining Kofman's later writings on Nietzsche alongside her autobiography, this article contends that Kofman's defense of anti-Semitism in Nietzsche serves to fend off her own ambivalence about being Jewish.

Type
Research Article
Information
Hypatia , Volume 23 , Issue 1 , March 2008 , pp. 41 - 64
Copyright
Copyright © 2008 by Hypatia, Inc.

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