gallows/Kant OR gallows/Nietzsche

[ray gonne]

Australian Studies Centre wrote:
> 
> Nietzsche, in discussing the 'theatrics' of public punishment has this to
> say:
> 
> "To the degree that to make suffer is pleasure in its highest form, and to
> the degree that the injured party received an extraordinary counter
> pleasure in exchange for the injury and distress caused by the injury: to
> make someone suffer, - a true feast" (Genealogy of Morals, II, 5)
> 
> Nietzche's is a rather nice critique of Kant's argument that law is
> universal, moral, and objective. The gallows, here and through Pynchon, can
> be read in context of a sexual economy (doesn't the audience take bets on
> whether the victim gets an erection?), and as linked to slavery as a way of
> extracting some kind of value from the body of the victim - whether it be
> labour or pleasure.
> 
> Would I be right in asserting that Pynchon's views are closer to Nietzsche
> than Kant?
> 

definitely goes along with pynchon's numerous and inter-textual
references to the reversal of the dominator/ dominated relationship.
ray