Nietzsche's French Legacy

This title examines the way recent French philosophy has used Nietzsche to develop its own critical projects and makes accessible the ideas of French poststructuralist theory.

More than any other figure, Friedrich Nietzsche is cited as the philosopher who anticipates and previews the philosophical themes that have dominated French theory since structuralism. Informed by the latest developments in both contemporary French philosophy and Nietzsche scholarship, Alan Schrift''s Nietzsche''s French Legacy provides a detailed examination and analysis of the way the French have appropriated Nietzsche in developing their own critical projects. Using Nietzsche''s thought as a springboard, this study makes accessible the ideas of some of the most important and difficult of contemporary French poststructuralist theorists including Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault and Helene Cixous. Through a careful analysis and close reading of the texts of Nietzsche and French poststructuralism, Schrift illuminates the ways in which Nietzsche''s thought prefigures certain poststructuralist motifs. He demonstrates how several dominant themes in contemporary French philosophy emerge out of Nietzsche''s own thinking. As one of the first books to critically examine the work of the new French anti-Nietzschean''s, Schrift defends the value of poststructuralism and Nietzsche as critical resources for confronting the present.