As it was Nietzsche’s 169th birthday yesterday, here’s a quote from the introduction to Derrida’s Of Grammatology, talking about his La Question du style:
A general reading of Nietzsche’s text would see him as a raging misogynist. But Derrida’s careful reading disengages a more complex collection of attitudes toward woman. Derrida breaks them into three and suggests that each Nitzschean attitude is contiguous with a psychoanalytical “position” – a modality of the subject’s relationship with the object. Summarized, the “positions” would be as follows:
The woman…condemned as…figure or power of lying… He was, he feared such a castrated woman…
The woman… condemned as… figure or power of truth… He was, he feared such a castrating woman…
The woman… recognized, beyond this double negation, affirmed as the affirmative, dissimulating, artistic, Dionysiac… He was, he loved such an affirmative woman. (QS 265, 267)
– Spivak’s Preface to Derrida’s “Of Grammatology”, quoting Derrida’s “La Question du style”. 1967 in French/France, 1976 in English, USA.
