Supposing Truth is a Woman – What Then?

Abstract

Nietzsche's analysis of the self-poisoning of ‘the will to power' and his insistence
upon overcoming its ideological outcome (the dogmatist's fake ‘Truth')
by recognizing the ‘un-truth' of a ‘logic of contamination,' demonstrates that
he understands ‘truth' as a paradox. What may one accordingly expect in response
to the question ‘Supposing truth is a woman – what then?', posed in
the preface to Beyond Good and Evil (1966)? Supported by Derrida's Spurs:
Nietzsche's Styles, I argue that Nietzsche could have drawn two radically different
analogies between paradoxical ‘truth' and ‘woman.' However, due to
the very kind of ideological conditioning (patriarchal), which his ‘free thinking'
resists in principle, he explicitly draws only one, hazarding a self-betraying
performative contradiction.
The obvious move might be to retain the valuable critique of ideology
made possible by his analysis of the ‘will to power,' while jettisoning the
self-undermining rhetoric that constructs sexual difference according to values
handed down by patriarchy. However, retaining and working through the
terms of sexual difference, and highlighting Nietzsche's blindness concerning
women, has the advantage of calling attention to its significance. The fact
that one may say in retrospect that even Nietzsche (of all thinkers!) remained
blindly subject to ideological conditioning, points to its unconscious nature
and raises the question of what ‘overcoming' in relation to the will to power
entails for the free thinkers he heralded.

South African Journal of Philosophy Vol. 26 (1) 2007: pp. 44-55