Nietzsche & Philosophy - Gilles Deleuze

At long last, my winter teaching is over.  I've just sat done at my favorite bar in the neighborhood to read the one book that, odd is at may seem, will forever be my 'Korea book'--the book that will put me back in to this phase of my life.

I will be drinking Kronenbourg, a beer that is hard to find even in the US. That's the beauty of this bar. But never mind that--on to more important things.

This book is the proper introduction to Deleuze. It was to his disservice (I can't say the same for Guattari) that the D-G collaboration was the thing that really brought Deleuze to English-speaking academia.

Comp Lit professors, and to a lesser extent English Lit theory buffs, saw Kafka: Towards a Minor Literature and said "Oh man! Finally a French theorist speaks right to the heart of the form and function of contemporary literature for theory-minded people."  Or something more elegant to that same effect.

I won't comment on the laundry list of ways that Derrida, Lacan, and Foucault had disappointed in this department; at any rate they were certainly in use. Derrida is still a useful case for contrast, however.

With their work on Kafka and the more complex project of Capitalisim and Schizophrenia that the Kafka so easily opens into, Deleuze and Guattari gave major authors the 'French Touch' in a way that still left the authors in question as the most important thing in the inquiry--(whether as subject, object, final or sufficient cause) the most useful thing, the most admirable thing, even the most admirably and usefully detestable thing (as would be the case with Freud in C&S). With Derrida, many feel that it was that writer's own erudition that was the center of attention.  Charmed as I have often been by his style, I just as often think this about dear departed Jacques.

The point is this: the Deleuze-Guattari moment is a notably intense moment of thought, but it is not the apex of Deleuze's non-linear thought trajectory. To follow this latter line-of-flight in all its light-speed meandering, one must start with the Nietzsche book.

It is the Nietzsche book (to be coupled in a useful paradox not with Hedeigger's book on the same mustachioed malcontent, but rather with his Hegel book) that we see the published and polished result of Deleuze's own apprenticeship in reading and thinking. The Nietzsche book is essential reading for understanding Deleuze because our reading of the book becomes our learning how to read Deleuze learning how to read.

Laughter, tears, utter coldness, vomiting, contempt, or supreme inspiration--any of these could be the result of a thorough struggle with this book. But whatever the specific reaction may be, this is a must read for its deceptively simple tactic: to desperately take the author (Nietzsche) at his word.  The first of many of Deleuze's explorations in conceptual mechanics.

I Have the Right to Destroy Myself

I Have the Right to Destroy Myself 
(Korean: 나는 나를 파괴할 권리가 있다)
Young-ha Kim
(click here for author website)
Edition: Harvest Originals, 2007 (and Kindle)

Our unnamed narrator, begins by explaining his perverse aestheticization of suicide.  A chilling quote to represent his thought: "People who don't know how to summarize have no dignity. Neither do people who needlessly drag on their messy lives. They who don't know the beauty of simplification, of pruning away the unnecessary, die without ever comprehending the true meaning of life" (6).  This is why he has devoted his professional life to creating beautiful suicides--finding, consoling, and finally organizing the suicides of his 'clients.'  The bulk of the novel is his elliptical and fragmented report about a group of people connected to one such client.  To demonstrate her centrality in the lives of her acquaintances, she has two names, Judith and Se-yeon and we see clearly how she energizes the lives of the narrator and two other men, named only 'C' and 'K.' 

I am now reading this book, over and over, as I've assigned it for my Reading and Discussion class at my university (I've paired it with Chang Ha-joon's 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism--see the relevant post).  I originally read this book during the summer before I moved to Korea.  My impression at the time, as far as I remember, was shock.  I had already watched as many Korean films as I could get my hands on.  I had also worked through a major television drama, Tomato   (토마토).  The television show is from 1999, the novel from 1996.  Now I know all about South Korea's rich field of cultural production, but a few years ago, to a relatively inexperienced American, the contrast was amazing.  Watch this highlight video set to Tomato's theme song for a hint of what I mean



Let's define American pop culture with two examples: the Jonas Brothers and Marilyn Manson.  Or how about Friends and Kill Bill?  Confused and excited?  Well, that's the response I had when, in the same July, I watched this TV show and read this book.

As I'm reading it now, week by week, the book is taking on a new complexity as it teaches me exactly how much I have learned about Korea, about being a foreigner, and about the rise of what is called 'globalization' since moving to South Korea.

After the semester ends, I will sum up what I've tried to do with this book in my classes.  For now, I simply want to note that this is a deceptively simple book.  You can read it in a few hours, especially if you know nothing about Korea.  But, like any remarkable work of fiction, the more attention you invest in  I Have the Right, the more difficult it will become.

For now, my basic reading of the text is as follows.  I Have the Right is a kind of Nietzschean tone poem dropped by the author, like a bomb, on a South Korean scene (mid 90s, remember) just beginning to think about imagining to recover from (please note all the bet hedging!) several decades of dictatorship, beginning to publicly wonder about the doom of freedom, a la Sartre.  Whatever links one might draw between the dueling dictators of the North and South, the book would welcome.  One can't lose sight of the absented protagonist of the story, Judith/Se-yeon, an abused, disaffected sex-worker.  But for me the keyword is 'Nietzschean'--all the gloom, disaster, and pain pinpointed by the novel serve to point out the opportunity for empowerment any of us can grab when our starting point is the sudden realization:

OMG!  I have the right to destroy myself!

Truly, an adventure in sitting still and being quiet.