It has become orthodox to read Nietzsche as proposing the ‘sublimation’ of troublesome behavioural impulses. On this interpretation, he is said to denigrate the elimination of our impulses, preferring that we master them by pressing them into the service of our higher goals. My thesis is that this reading of Nietzsche’s conception of self-cultivation does not bear scrutiny. Closer examination of his later thought reveals numerous texts that show him explicitly recommending an eliminatory approach to self-cultivation. I invoke his theory (...) of the will to power in order to explain why he persistently valorises both elimination and sublimation as preconditions of healthy subjective unity. I conclude that which of these two approaches he recommends in a given situation depends on whether or not the impulse in question can be put to use within the overall economy of our drives. (shrink)

This essay analyzes the first among the three moments of Georges Bataille’s reception of Nietzsche’s thought. During the 1930s, in the context of the review Acéphale, the French writer takes position in the debate about the relationship between Nietzscheism and fascism. He lays claim on the heritage of the German thinker as the source of a “heterogeneous” politics. This group of articles provides the context in which Bataille can start to delineate an original meditation on the relationship between work and (...) society. In this sense, they will mark a turning point in the path toward the post-war developments on the writers’ engagement. A new thematization of the relationship between text and context will emerge from the confrontation with Nietzsche and from the articulation of the fundamental duality of the forms of politics. (shrink)

El concepto de la vida en Nietzsche es una idea central, tanto de su propio pensamiento como en relación a sus repercusiones en el debate contemporáneo. Sus múltiples significaciones superan el campo en el cual inicialmente había sido planteado, invitando a la discusión en las fronteras disciplinares y al debate interdisciplinario. Se plantea examinar la concepción nietzscheana del eterno retorno desde la noción lacaniana de repetición con tal de esclarecer la idea de la vida como mujer.