that the advent of modern man depends upon a mere suppression of instinctual strength, and oversimplification of the body. Arguably, there are two narrative threads in Genealogy: one of which appears to follow a clear, linear path, whereas the other loops back upon itself, in much the same way that Nietzsche represents the body to have done in his account of the subject. Indeed, if Genealogy is written as a dual discourse, this should not surprise, given Nietzsche’s preference for masks and duplicity (Beyond Good and Evil, 53; 213). If Nietzsche attempted to present “his truth” by means of this text, then it is also likely that he would have protected this truth from what he regarded as the common sensibility of most who would approach his texts. Moreover, in line with the strain within his philosophy that seeks to bring together the body and text—by conceiving of the body as an organism that interprets, and texts as expressive of drives—Nietzsche structured his text so as to attract a particular type, which manifests itself corporeally as well as textually. His writing would resonate with this “type,” even at the level of sensuality and desire. It is now a truism of Nietzschean scholarship that, although readers often describe the encounter with Nietzsche as intimate, for some this intimacy indicates a real connection to his philosophy, whereas others are merely seduced by the masks and “trappings” that populate his texts. The figures of “will to power” and “eternal recurrence” exemplify this difference: whereas for some they operate as tropes that indicate a movement of feeling [Gefühl] that might be shared by the (better) reader, for the majority they are to be understood literally, and so these superior vicissitudes of the soul are protected from those who would find them strange and even threatening. For this reason, Genealogy contains both “a truth” and a fairy tale. Predictably, the fairy tale is the best known, and most-often related, of these textual levels. I will, then, commence the section that follows by sketching the common interpretation of Genealogy, before elaborating the less-accessible, and ultimately circuitous, version of that text.
Of Slaves and Masters: The Birth of Good and Evil
As the story goes, the master-type, or noble, is Nietzsche’s appellation for those who accord with “active force.” The noble takes control of and determines his environment through the act of naming, evaluating whatever agrees with his constitution as good, and whatever does not agree—that is, whatever appears base, beneath consideration—as bad. This necessitates an under-class, the slave-type: those “ill-constituted” beings already labeled bad by the master, and upon whom this master will unleash spontaneous acts of cruelty in accordance with a social hierarchy that renders the slave at the master’s disposal. Thus, from the point of view of the slave, the master’s morality must pose a threat to his existence.[16] The reactive slave evaluates not from his “highest pleasure,” or jouissance—which would involve being able to lay claim to one’s environment, already owned by the noble[17]—but rather, the slave’s values are constructed out of a sense of fear and self-preservation, and in inverse relation to the master’s values. The slave-type evaluates backward, in Nietzsche’s terms, demarcating first whatever intimidates it as “evil,” whereas what appears most harmless becomes its highest virtue.
By means of what Nietzsche calls “the slave revolt in morality,” the ill-constituted slave achieves a reversal of all values, and thus triumphs over the master. The master is better constituted as his confederacy of wills (will to power) strikes a productive balance between the active force that commands, and the reactive force that obeys. Conversely, the circuitous process by which the slave moral system develops reroutes the drive so that “life”—that is, difference, power, creativity—is inhibited. This means that in the slave-type the most passive (or reactive) drives dominate and subdue the most active. Like a herd animal, the slave lives so as not to draw to himself the attention of the stronger, better constituted, beast of prey. Thus life in the main is reduced to a mode of self-preservation rather than increase, or greater perfection. The master-type, on the other hand, will come to be “tamed,” alienated from his power, through the acquisition of conscience, or more precisely “bad conscience”: the feeling of guilt that serves to reign in the expression of power. The victory of slave morality is to universalize the viewpoint of the servile, the downtrodden, the victim, and to install this viewpoint in the master, at whose hands the victim had suffered. In grammatical terms, guilt consists in identification with the object of an action rather than its subject, and thus all become passive, so unable to give expression to their impulses. Yet, the conversion of the noble to slave morality is not figured simply in terms of suppression. The twist to the plot of Genealogy consists in the master’s coming to be libidinally attached to this guilt—taking pleasure in the bad conscience—and thus it is through a positive expression of his impulses that he succumbs to slave morality. The master is accomplice to his subjection.
I will return momentarily to the noble’s libidinal investment in bad conscience. At this stage I would like briefly to pause and consider the reader’s subjection to Nietzsche’s text, in terms of how she might encounter this discussion of noble and slave. Nietzsche seems clearly to favor the master type—the one who engenders her environment—over the slave type, presented as a mangled organism. Yet desire for nobility presents itself as a problem in Genealogy: for how are we to negotiate a path from this botched, slave mode of life, back to something more original and pure? Moreover, desire for the place of the noble is often contaminated by ambivalence. The master mode of evaluation may be more direct—a healthier expression of corporeality—yet it also necessitates behavior repugnant to the modern (already servile) sensibility. As indicated earlier, however, ambivalence is vital to the success of interpellation. Whereas the reader finds himself or herself caught between admiration for the master type and guilt at the prospect of inflicting suffering upon another, the interpellation is contingent upon an ambiguous and unstable (and thus incomplete) resolution of such conflict. Indeed, “the success” of the interpellation depends precisely upon the reader’s ambivalence toward Nietzsche’s most exalted (and excessive) figures, into which she works to propel herself, through identification, in order to assuage the anxiety induced by such ambivalence. The reader might tell herself that a negative response to the noble is merely a hangover from her slave upbringing—that she can work through this discomfort by devoting herself to Nietzsche’s works. Or, she might deny the unbridled malevolence that Nietzsche had in mind when he wrote of the noble as “a beast of prey.” Yet either way, the noble is the ambiguous object of the reader’s aspiration and fear: a figure of excess through which he or she casts subjectivity.
Furthermore, the noble is not only the excess of the narrative structure—not strictly making sense in terms of Nietzsche’s argument—but also comes to resonate with what the reader identifies as her own excess, or own lost origin. In the first instance, the noble is a glitch in Nietzsche’s system: the piece of the puzzle that does not quite fit, or does not make sense. Perhaps this figure is merely remnant of Nietzsche’s nostalgia for ancient Imperialism:[18] yet it also performs a function for the text in recruiting readers and advocates. This is because the figure of the noble performs a function for the reader. It represents a glitch in the reader’s system, or a stain upon her field of vision, at once fascinating and repulsive. As will be theorized in the chapters that follow, “the excess” figured by the noble reminisces an aspect of the reader that must be discarded and hidden within “the object” (or text) in the very production of her subjectivity. In this respect, the reader identifies with the figure of excess, yet ambiguously, as it represents a lost wholeness and what she must disavow, in order to ensure the integrity of the self. Accordingly, it makes sense that the noble would not tally in terms of Nietzsche’s argument, but could only emerge after the historical process of servility had already taken place. In keeping with the logic of excess, the relation of affect with the figure of the noble can be produced only from the slave point of view. As will become clear, the noble is impossible as an event of prehistory since the conditions of its advent arise from within slave morality: and more precisely, from the slave’s guilt regarding the noble’s possibility.
This adds a different inflection, and another degree of complexity, to Nietzsche’s genealogical
