Fw: An Interview with Terry Eagleton

[Matthew Cissell]

----- Forwarded Message -----
From: Matthew Cissell <macissell at yahoo.es>
To: Kai Frederik Lorentzen <lorentzen at hotmail.de> 
Sent: Friday, June 8, 2012 4:08 PM
Subject: Re: An Interview with Terry Eagleton
 

I thought that that Bled fellow would pop up to defend FN and that Kai would respond to the Marx sub-thread. Aren't surprises nice.
Mr. Fonash cites Zizek and  Steve Smith as scholars who have put FN on the right side of the political spectrum. He could add Richard Wolin to the list. (I mentioned Wolin's "The Seduction of Unreason" in a loose bash on Jung.) However, I don't think it would help as Wolin's atttempt to paint FN as a "proto-fascist" comes off very unconvincingly, especially when measured against the more balanced appraisal offered in J.W Burrow's "The Crisis of Reason". >From Burrow's book: "Nietzsche's influence was so great and extensive not only because of the power, intellectual and rhetorical, of his writing... but mecause his message of liberation operated at a number of different levels: cultural, epistemological, psychological and ethical (including sexual)." FN as a "radical right wing theorist"? Maybe you're thinking of some of the scholars that Habermas referred to as "neo-conservatives" and their use of FN.
As for the choice of words, "intoxicating", Ich bin mit Kai. That might fit with Bataille or Klossowski, which brings me to Kai's comments regarding Zizek or "evil French stuff" Genau! Let me add a cinema quote: "Don't touch it mom! It's pure evil!"
As much as I respect Wolin's (and other's) effort to re-evaluate 'postmodern' intellectual icons like FN, I'm afraid that efforts to deflate the concept of 'postmodernism' may cause them to push the envelope to far.

All the best
MC Otis

________________________________
 From: Kai Frederik Lorentzen <lorentzen at hotmail.de>
To: Michael Fonash <mff8785 at gmail.com> 
Cc: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org> 
Sent: Friday, June 8, 2012 1:03 PM
Subject: Re: An Interview with Terry Eagleton
 

It is funny to see that someone so afraid of theoretical "intoxications" 
refers to - of all people - Zizek, whom nobody else but Eagleton once 
called "Lacan's representative on earth" ...

Watch your step, this is evil French stuff! :-)

"TEXT --- the hardest drug of all." (Rainald Goetz)

On 08.06.2012 12:10, Michael Fonash wrote:
> Kai,
>
> "Nietzsche is a radical right-wing theorist...  they(Marx and
> Nietzsche) are brilliant re-writers of
> Hegel and not much else."
>
> Original?  I apologize if I made it sound as if this was my personal
> reading.  Thinkers well-read on both sides of the Western
> Tradition(Left and Right, Zizek and Steve Smith for example) are more
> than familiar with this and have been seeing it for more than 15-20
> years.  It is "known" by those who are able to weather the
> intoxicating storm of undergrad
 Marx and Nietsche.  Dangerously, some
> never weather the intoxicating -ism of Marx and the the revel of
> Nietzsche's intoxicating poetry.
>
> Mike
>
> On Fri, Jun 8, 2012 at 12:49 AM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen
> <lorentzen at hotmail.de>  wrote:
>> Nietzsche "not much else" but a "re-writer()" of Hegel?!
>>
>> OK ... I give you one for originality.
>>
>>
>>
>> On 07.06.2012 18:00, Michael Fonash wrote:
>>> I am still dumbfounded as to how the many vociferous, outspoken
>>> Profs/Phd's(certainly not all) can not see how Marx is a radical
>>> left-wing theorist as Nietzsche is a radical right-wing theorist:
>>> neither being anywhere near "truth" or an effective, sustainable
>>> theory of Modern
 gov't.  Accurately, they are brilliant re-writers of
>>> Hegel and not much else.  The title "Marx is Right" is just...
>>> foolish and silly.
>>>
>>> On Thu, Jun 7, 2012 at 7:44 AM, Dave Monroe<against.the.dave at gmail.com>
>>>   wrote:
>>>> On Wed, Jun 6, 2012 at 7:06 PM, alice wellintown
>>>> <alicewellintown at gmail.com>    wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> http://www.oxonianreview.org/wp/an-interview-with-terry-eagleton/
>>>> http://yalepress.yale.edu/book.asp?isbn=9780300169430
>>>
>
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