Nietzsche and Critical Social Theory: Affirmation, Animosity and Ambiguity brings together scholars from a variety of disciplinary background to assess the salience of Nietzsche for critical social theory today. In the context of global economic crises and the rise of authoritarian regimes across the U.S. and Europe, the question asked by these scholars is: why Nietzsche now? Containing several innovative interventions in the areas of queer theory, political economy, critical race theory, labour history, hip-hop aesthetics, sociology, the Frankfurt School, social movements studies, science and technology studies, pedagogy, and ludic studies, this volume pushes Nietzsche studies in new directions, seeking to broaden the appeal of Nietzsche beyond philosophy and political theory.
Publication date: December 22, 2020
Acknowledgements
Notes on Contributors
Introduction: Situating this Volume
Part 1: Ressentiment and Redemption: Overcoming the Slave Revolt of Morals, Politics, and Aesthetics
1 Wounded Attachments?: Slave Morality, the Left, and the Future of Revolutionary Desire
C. Heike Schotten
2 The Trump Horror Show through Nietzschean Perspectives
Douglas Kellner
3 Nietzsche, Adorno, and the Musical Spirit of Ressentiment and Redemption
Nancy S. Love
4 Hip-Hop as Critical Tragic Realism: Cultural Analysis beyond Irony and Conflict
James Meeker and T.J. Berard
5 Nietzsche’s Economy: Revisiting the Slave Revolt in Morals
Allison Merrick
Part 2: On the Advantages and Disadvantages of Nietzsche for Marxist Critique
6 Marx, Nietzsche, and the Contradictions of Capitalism
Ishay Landa
7 Labor’s Will to Power: Nietzsche, American Syndicalism, and the Politics of Liberation
Kristin Lawler
8 Marxism, Anarchism, and the Nietzschean Critique of Capitalism
Gary Yeritsian
9 Between Nietzsche and Marx: “Great Politics and What They Cost”
Babette Babich
Part 3: Beyond Truth and Relativism: Nietzsche and the Question of Knowledge
10 Toward a Gay Social Science: A Nietzschean-Marxist Alternative to Conventional Sociological Theory
Michael Roberts
11 Resuscitating Sociological Theory: Nietzsche and Adorno on Error and Speculations
Jeremiah Morelock
12 The Science of the Last Man: Nietzsche and the Early Frankfurt School
Daniel Sullivan
13 The Death of Truth – Guilt, Anxiety, Dread, and Hope: Nietzschean Confessions
Christine Payne
Part 4: All-Too-Human: The Question of the Human Condition in Light of Nietzsche
14 Nietzsche’s Genealogy as a Critique of Racial Narratives and the Loss of Solidarity
Jung Min Choi and John W. Murphy
15 Nietzsche’s “Anti-Darwinism”: A Deflationary Critique
Peter Atterton
16 Play as Watchword: Nietzsche and Foucault
Dawn Helphand
17 Critique of Subjectivity and Affirmation of Pleasure in Adorno and Nietzsche
Stefano Giacchetti Ludovisi
18 Nietzsche and Happiness
Bryan S. Turner
19 Beyond Good and Evil: Nietzschean Pedagogy in the History Classroom
Eve Kornfeld
Index