Academic Publications

The paper examines Kofman’s interpretation of Nietzsche in the light of the claim that philosophical interpretation was for her a form of writing her ‘self.’ For much of her writing career, Sarah Kofman devoted herself to interpreting the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. Yet she also experimented with autobiographical writing and held, like Nietzsche, that philosophy itself is a form of autobiography, or at least bespeaks the personal. This paper argues that for Kofman interpreting Nietzsche was a species of autobiographical activity, through which she formed a mediated relation to her self. Kofman’s relation to Nietzsche will be examined with reference to Melanie Klein’s psychoanalytic model of the child’s relation to the mother. The paper argues that Kofman refuses the possibility of anti-Semitism in Nietzsche in order to fend off her own ambivalence about being Jewish, and that this is achieved by an identification of her own (abject) mother with Nietzsche’s.

The article is forthcoming in Hypatia.

By comparing Pierre Klossowski’s works on Nietzsche and the Marquis de Sade, the paper attempts to clarify his understanding of the part played by the ‘bodily remainder’ in recruiting a following of readers to their texts. Klossowski’s designation of the ‘simulacrum’ of eternal return in Nietzsche’s philosophy is compared with his account of the role played by sodomy in Sade’s writings. Klossowski contends that, through these figures, a bodily contagion (represented by sickness and perversity, respectively), is communicated to the reader, but esoterically: that is, only to a select few, whose bodies can replicate the impulses that the text conceals. Ultimately, what Klossowski’s interpretations of Nietzsche and Sade achieve, however, is the dissimulation of identity, as well as of a decisive difference between the reader and the philosopher whom she reads.

Author Posting. © Taylor & Francis, 2007. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Taylor & Francis for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Textual Practice, Volume 21 Issue 1, March 2007. doi:10.1080/09502360601156922

This paper addresses the emergence of the ‘death drive’ in Sigmund Freud’s later work, and the significance of this development for his psychoanalytic theory as a whole. In particular, the paper argues that the ‘death drive’ is a pivotal concept, articulating a connection between what are commonly understood as the ‘lower’ and ‘higher’ functions of the psyche. Moreover, the death drive is pivotal in a second sense, in that it articulates a turn away from the strictly empirical realm of science, to a dark and obscure field indicated (in terms of lack), but not comprehended, by observable phenomena. Finally, the paper suggests that as Freud’s departure from his scientific methodology into the wilderness of speculation, the death drive represents his most valuable contribution to psychoanalysis. With the death drive, Freud is able to engender a new perspective of human being: one that is not already encompassed by the mechanistic neurological viewpoint from which his researches first issued.

This article was published in Minerva in November, 2005.

This article elaborates Luce Irigaray's interpretation of Nietzsche in her book Marine Lover in relation to her writings on the productive function of love. The article was published in Diacritics, in 2003, v. 33, issue 1.

Recent publications have traced a relation of influence between Nietzsche's philosophy and Freudian psychoanalysis. While Freud is certainly intellectually indebted to Nietzsche, the present paper emphasises the significant difference between these philosophers' works: Namely, that they exhibit a different economy, and are thus committed to competing theoretical structures. This difference comes to the fore in the approach that each takes to elaborating the mind-body relation, and especially in the contrast between Freud's early neuroscientific speculations (which haunt his later writings) and Nietzsche's emphasis upon language, and particularly metaphor. In order to illustrate this ‘economical’ difference between their theories, the paper critiques Freud's early commitment to neurological discourse using Nietzsche's genealogical method. The article is published in Minerva.