“Keeping It in the Family”: Sarah Kofman Reading Nietzsche as a Jewish Woman

Abstract

This article examines Sarah Kofman's interpretation of Nietzsche in light of the claim that interpretation was for her both an articulation of her identity and a mode of deconstructing the very notion of identity. Faulkner argues that Kofman's work on Nietzsche can be understood as autobiographical, in that it served to mediate a relation to her self. Faulkner examines this relation with reference to Klein's model of the child's connection to its mother. By examining Kofman's later writings on Nietzsche alongside her autobiography, this article contends that Kofman's defense of anti-Semitism in Nietache serves to fend off her own ambivalence about beingJewish.When approaching Sarah Kofman's work on Friedrich Nietzsche, one is struck by the very personal quality of the relation she forms with her subject through writing. In fact, it might be said that from her book-length studies of Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud to her short discourses about her childhood and her dreams, her writings are as personal as they are philosophical.' The personal interpenetrates the philosophical, and vice versa, because for her the two could not properly be separated. Kofman recognized that, like all philosophers, she did philosophy for her own reasons-that her writings were motivated by a vital interest, and psychological need.2 When approaching the work of another, she evokes material from the philosopher's life so as to gently illuminate the inconsistencies and commitments of the philosophy. The capricious coexistence of the philosophical and life narratives is precisely her object, such that philosophical interpretation merges with autobiography. Instead of detracting from the philosophical importance of her work, 1 argue that it enhances it,

Understanding PsychoanalysisMatthew Sharpe and Joanne Faulkner Stocksfield, UK: Acumen Publishing, 2008, 240 pp.

“…The authors themselves come well prepared to deliver on all fronts related to psychoanalysis with special interest in the poststructuralist, critical theory, and feminist interpretations. See Sharpe’s article “Psychoanalysis” in Understanding Derrida (2004); Sharpe (2002a) on Derrida and Camus; Sharpe (2002b) on critical theory and Herbert Marcuse;Boucher et al’s Traversing the Fantasy: Critical Responses to Slavoj Žižek (2006); as well as Faulkner’s (2008) brilliant article on Sarah Kofman and Nietzsche published in “ Hypatia .”…”