Reviewed by Paul Kingsbury
University of Kentucky

Friedrich Nietzsche passionately urged his readers to question and re-evaluate assumed truths and morals by rendering everything philosophically precarious; in short, he aimed to push things that wished to fall. Over the hundred years following his death, Nietzsche’s philosophy has been subject to harsh criticism, including feminist critiques that have been only too eager to push away his philosophy on the grounds of its alleged outdated and rampant misogyny. But many feminists have buttressed Nietzsche’s philosophy, arguing that it empowers a feminist project by its potential to expose prevailing power structures of domination.

Despite the pervasiveness of ‘woman,’ ‘womanly,’ and the ‘feminine’ and the importance of these categories in Nietzsche’s philosophy, only in the past two decades has criticism been able to engage with the ramifications of these terms in Nietzsche’s work. The eminent Nietzsche scholar and translator Walter Kaufman, who through his seminal re-constructive readings extricated Nietzsche’s work from a deep-seated advocacy of fascism, typified pre-feminist approaches to Nietszche. But, even Kaufman ultimately disavowed the taboo specter of misogyny in Nietzsche as an irrelevant misnomer. A footnote in Kaufman’s translation of The Gay Science conveys his dismissive and unsustainable position concerning "women": "many of Nietzsche’s generalizations of women, descend to a lower level—stylistically as well as in content. It seems to be intended merely to lead up to the pun that follows it" (Kaufman in Nietzsche 1974, 317). One infamous "lower level" passage contains a warning to Nietzsche’s iconoclastic prophet-dancer Zarathustra to arm himself with a whip before encountering a group of would-be assailant women. Despite the alleged brutishness of such moments, much recent scholarship, including feminist scholarship, cautions against simplistic interpretations of Nietzsche’s writing. This scholarship contends that his sporadic and unrestrained ad hominem (or perhaps more accurately "ad feminem") arguments should not foreclose our responsibility as readers to integrate Nietzsche’s unconventional and fragmentary styles which resist attachment to a singularly correct meaning. In the case of Zarathustra, some of his defenders point out that the advice is proffered by a woman.

How to negotiate these sometimes volatile and well worn encounters between Nietzsche and feminists is a concern central to Caroline Joan Picart’s book, Resentment and the "Feminine" in Nietzsche’s Politico-Aesthetics. According to Picart, most feminists draw from one or two texts isolated as discrete moments within Nietzsche’s undulating and multifaceted corpus as a whole. In her introduction, Picart skillfully delimits a constellation of feminist approaches to Nietzsche that range from Ofelia Schutte, who, a decade ago, in this very Newsletter, argued that Nietzsche was clearly anti-feminist, to David Farrell Krell’s insistence that Nietzsche "writes with the hand of a woman" (Krell 1986, 10). While outlining the relational subtleties of the many feminist renderings of Nietzsche, Picart unflinchingly defines her own task throughout as forging a position that she believes preserves the valuable insights of these all too often polemical rifts.

Self-admittedly following Nietzsche’s role as the "psychologist of the feminine," Picart’s aims to go "beyond (effacing) Nietzsche’s misogyny" (22), via a genealogical and symptomatological method. For Picart, the point is to effect a feminist critique that goes beyond a "good and evil" evaluation of Nietzsche. Complimenting previous "vertical" or in-depth interpretative forays, Picart seeks to deploy a "horizontal" genealogical approach that addresses many of Nietzsche’s early to late writings, thereby rendering the partitioning of Nietsche into either misogynist or proto-feminist as untenable. Picart writes, "[n]otwithstanding the observation that Nietzsche admittedly displays a type of misogyny, I am more concerned with interpreting his peculiar misogyny via… symptomatological criteria that he himself establishes" (2-3). Thus, rather than embarking on the traditional project of clarifying the degree of (in)offensiveness of Nietzsche’s writing, Picart seeks to examine the ways in which misogyny can be traced as a historically variegated and, sometimes, a wholly inappropriate moment in Niezsche’s philosophy as a whole.

Acknowledging Jacques Derrida’s notion of an "immanent critique" and Luce Irigaray’s tactic of "infection," Picart aims to deploy a Nietzschean critique of Nietzsche. She appropriates his interpretative method of a symptomatology that differentiates health as resilience and vitality from sickness configured in weakness and fragility in the metamorphoses of the "feminine" and the "masculine" of his devolving political project. Picart points out that in earlier texts such as The Birth of Tragedy(1872), the "feminine," as portrayed in Greek deities such as Aphrodite, is an image of rejuvenation that positively reflects procreative and regenerative power needed to address modernity’s decadence. These positive tenets are eventually displaced by the misogynistic scapegoating of "woman," borne out of Nietzsche’s increasing resentment and impotence to birth the Übermensch as envisioned in Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883-85). To forge a life untainted by the ruinous nihilism of modernity can only be survived by Nietzsche, according to Picart, as a philosophical suicide realized in Ecce Homo (1888). As the title of her book suggests, the relation between the "feminine" and resentment, or ressentiment, defined by Nietzsche as the inability to accept the circumstances of our lives, is a key and, in my opinion, a thoroughly effective structuring moment for Picart’s project. Similarly, the politico-aesthetic derived from Tracy Strong’s term, "Political Aesthetics" (Strong 1988, 153-74), as the convergence of the political and the aesthetic, allows Picart to convey the complexities of Nietzsche’s understanding of power so central to feminist debates. For Picart, Nietzsche’s early intertwining of aesthetics and politics becomes increasingly hardened into a politics of domination driven by his Nietzschean, all too Nietzschean, slippage into a philosophy resentful of women. An outspoken phallocentric politic emerges in his later writings with no place for the once lauded quality of the feminine, which becomes a site of frustration and derision. In addition, the politico-aesthetic offers Picart a way to forge a post-Nietzschean gendered aesthetic. In contrast to Nietzsche she proposes to finish the book "critically engaged in a politics of resistance against the temptation to ressentiment and the appeal to Authority, and a politics that does not negate its aesthetic underpinnings, as a mediation between ‘truth’ and ‘lie’" (10).

The main section of Picart’s book consists of three chapters that periodically chart this ressentiment-driven treatment of the "feminine"/"woman" in Nietzsche’s texts. Maintaining the wonderful analytic dexterity in her introduction, Picart combines an effective conveyance of the intense vitality of Nietzsche’s writing with a thorough understanding of the allusions in his text, enabled by her symtomatological and genealogical approaches. These chapters are well laid out, anchored by sub-sections of introductory remarks and concluding remarks that kept me well informed of her often-dazzling insights and reportage. These chapters also include Picart’s discussion of influential Nietzschean scholars, such as Sarah Kofman and Irigaray, that really enhance the main themes pertaining to the chapters.

In the first of these chapters, "The Pre-Zarathustran Phase: Exca/Elevating the Mother," Picart analyzes Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy (1872), Human, All Too Human (1878), and The Gay Science (1882). The methodological framework of the genealogical/symptomatological approach established earlier in the book enables Picart to deftly handle the micro-narratives, mythic masks, personifications, and anthropomorphisms that characterize these earlier writings. These form Nietzsche’s benevolent and optimistic treatment of the feminine, as well as his rare references to "woman as victim." In the next chapter, "The Zarathustran Phase: The Phallic Mother," Picart analyzes Nietzcshe’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883-85), a book that Picart argues indicates a change in Nietzsche’s treatment of the "feminine" and "woman," which are configured in a Romantic political mythology of male birthing. The chapter concerns the hysterical phallic-mother in the figure of Zarathustra who conveys ressentiment as Nietzsche’s mythic mouthpiece in relation to the feminine and his inability to achieve a patrilinear birth beyond himself as the Übermensch. The following chapter,"The Post-Zarathustran Phase: Emasculate Conception," includes treatment of Beyond Good and Evil (1886), Twighlight of The Idols (1888), and Ecce Homo (1888). Here, Picart re-presents Nietzsche as a philosopher stricken with a corrosive pessimism concerning the recovery of modernity’s sickness that leads to his advocation of its destruction, filtered into his outright polemical condemnation of the "feminine," now usually castigated as "woman."

In the final chapter, "Looking Back, Looking Forward," Picart looks back on her genealogical rendering of Nietzsche’s resentment and the "feminine" question and looks forward to a post-Niezschean politico-aesthetic. She does so first by evaluating what kind of authority can be mobilized in the face of Nietzsche’s pronouncements and Michel Foucault’s re-assertions of the death of the A/author as God. Second, she argues the necessity to avoid the will-to ressentiment that has allegedly infiltrated some feminist practices by taking into account the insights of Hélèn Cixous and Trinh Minh-ha. Picart aligns her project with their work foregrounding the functions of narrative and myth as a gendered politico-aesthetic attentive to contemporary socioeconomic conditions. Picart bolsters her post-Nietzschean vision by presenting her pointillistic drawing called "Nurturance?" which depicts a wild boar suckling on an aborigine mother’s breast who holds a child upon her thigh. For Picart, the ambiguity of the image expresses her "ocular politics" that seeks to expose Same-other constructions as a form of ressenitment. This reifies along the cross-cultural, gendered, Romantic/Modern that continue to operate today.

Resentment and the "Feminine" in Nietzsche’s Politico-Aesthetics is stimulating, challenging, and an immense joy to read. Picart’s inventive interpretative methods, her analytical capability to lucidly convey the nuances of feminist critiques, and her detailed knowledge of the allusions in Nietzsche’s work is a heady mixture, and one that makes an important and potentially revelatory contribution to Nietzsche studies. The last chapter of her book is somewhat eclipsed by the complex vitality of what comes earlier; but it offers a glimpse at the type of work and spirit Picart seeks to further. While I doubt Picart would ever grow resentful of Nietzchean scholars who fail to read her book, I am certain readers will regret not having read sooner this major contribution that dramatically pushes, rather than gently falls into, feminist inquiries of Nietzsche’s work.

Works Cited

Krell, David F. 1986. Postponements: Woman, Sensuality, and Death in Nietzsche. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1974. The Gay Science. Translated by Walter Kaufman. New York: Vintage Books.

Schutte, Ofelia. 1990. "Nietzsche on Gender Difference: A Critique." American Philosophical Association Newsletter on Feminism and Philosophy 88:3 (1989), 31-35; reprinted with commentaries in 89:2, 63-66.