Stephen Alexander / Simon Solomon
Dear Simon,
Thank you for your remarks on a recent post entitled 'Yabba Dabba Doo!' (28 Feb 2025).
As I think you deserve a somewhat longer (and more considered) response than the comments section allows - and as the Little Greek suggested the following remarks may interest a wider audience - I've decided to publish them here in the form of an open letter ...
Firstly, to answer your question regarding Barthes and nihilism, I suggest you read Shane Weller's essay entitled 'Active Philology: Barthes and Nietzsche', in French Studies, Vol. 73, Issue 2 (April, 2019), pp. 217-233. You can find a revised version of the essay on Kent University's Academic Repository:
As some readers may not have the time or inclination to read the above text in full, here's the abstract which, I trust, will allow them to see why Barthes might indeed be considered a nihilist in the Nietzschean sense:
"While the importance of Nietzsche to Barthes has long been recognized, with Barthes himself being the first to acknowledge it, this essay argues that Nietzsche's influence lies behind almost all of the major aspects of Barthes's mode of reading and writing in the 1970s, a mode that Barthes describes as 'active philology'. At the heart of this active philology is a cancellation of meaning that makes of Barthes's later critical practice a form of active nihilism in the Nietzschean sense. Exploring the various facets of this active philology in order to highlight the ways in which Barthes both follows and deviates from Nietzsche, this essay proposes an understanding of Barthes the active philologist as the incarnation of what Nietzsche terms the 'last nihilist' - and, crucially, one for whom any kind of Nietzschean overcoming of nihilism is anathema."
Even without reading Weller's essay, I would've thought, Simon, that the phrase La mort de l'auteur - title of a famous essay written by Barthes in 1967 - provides a huge clue as to what drives his critical approach ...
Secondly, you're right, Nietzsche does say in The Anti-Christ that the word 'Christianity' is already a misunderstanding and that in reality "there has been only one Christian, and he died on the Cross" [1]. But if you were to continue reading the same section of the above work (39), you would find the following important lines:
"It is false to the point of absurdity to see in a belief [...] the distinguishing characteristic of the Christian: only Christian practice, a life such as he who died on the Cross lived, is Christian. ... Even today such a life is possible, for certain men even necessary: genuine, primitive Christianity will be possible at all times. ... Not a belief, but a doing, above all a not-doing of many things, a different being." [2]
As ever with Nietzsche, there are lots of subtle twists and turns and one has to be wary about taking a line, a paragraph, or even an entire section as providing his definitive position. He puts it this way; he puts it that way; then he puts it another way entirely. The point is one can be a Christian, providing you don't turn a practice into a doctrine; i.e., it's about imitating Christ not following the teachings of the Church.
As for De Profundis and other matters ... I don't see why I should accept this tear-stained text as more valuable than Wilde's earlier writings; you may find what you describe as his repudiation of aestheticism magnificent and moving, but I see it as a loss of style.
And as for his ludicrous self-identification with Christ (with the latter conceived as a Romantic hero and artist), well, what is that if not simply another pose? I'm surprised you're taken in by this mix of self-pity, resentment, and bloated rhetoric.
I'm also surprised that you don't seem to see the irony in quoting the part of Wilde's letter in which he takes a pop at those whose "thoughts are someone else's opinions [...] their passions a quotation" [3].
And not only do you quote from Wilde, but from Nietzsche and Jung too - even as you seem to object to my referencing authors; or perhaps your remark about being an 'anyone-ian' betrays a misunderstanding of how proper names function within a text.
In brief, the proper name contains within it a series of associations (and connotations) that I’m calling upon in order show how 'my' text unfolds within a much wider philosophical and literary history and an intertextual space. When I say 'as a Barthesian', for example, I’m not identifying with Barthes as an extratextual being, but evoking a certain style of thinking and writing.
Using proper names is also, of course, a way of dispersing and disguising the self; like Nietzsche, I want to be able to declare myself 'all the names in history' - onymic ambiguity rather than unified authorial presence is the aim.
Anyway, hope these remarks answer your questions and address your concerns.
SA
Notes
[1] Nietzsche, The Anti-Christ, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Penguin Books, 1990), p. 161.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Oscar Wilde, De Profundis. Written in 1897, the complete and corrected text wasn't published until 1962 when it was included in The Letters of Oscar Wilde, ed. Rupert Hart-Davis (Harcourt, Brace & World). The line quoted can be found on p. 479. Note that a scholarly edition, ed. by Ian Small, was published as De Profundis; Epistola: In Carcere et Vinculis, by Oxford University Press in 2005 (Vol. II of The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde).
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