Nietzsche, Foucault, Yoga, and Feminist S/Self-Actualisation

“You are will to power and nothing besides”: Nietzsche, Foucault, Yoga, and Feminist s/Self-Actualisation A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Heather Moritz School of English, Media and Performing Arts Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences University of New South Wales Sydney, Australia 23 April 2009 Word Count: 71,682 Abstract This thesis argues that Friedrich Nietzsche’s notion of world and self as ‘will to power and nothing besides’ offers a highly productive interpretive lens or ‘grid of intelligibility’ for understanding the ethical implications of Michel Foucault’s middle and late works on power and subjectivity. For if the late modern era is marked by a sustained and pervasive incredulity toward metanarrative, it is also the historical site for the reappearance and widespread acceptance of a very ancient metanarrative – the Heraclitean view of material reality as continual flux. Inasmuch as Nietzsche’s will to power philosophy is grounded in this Pre-Socratic worldview, his works and those of his devotee Foucault may serve as a productive foundation for a late modern ethics. The scholarly implications of reading Foucault’s middle and late works through the interpretive lens of Nietzschean will to power in its two key manifestations, domination and dynamism, are multiple. In addition to providing new insights into the value of Nietzschean-Foucauldian philosophy for advancing a late modern ethics, such an analysis also illuminates important continuities in Foucault’s theory of power and how his works simultaneously extend and critique Nietzschean views on the role of asceticism in culture. The thesis then turns to a more futuristic exploration of how Foucault’s final texts, feminist critiques and extensions of these texts, and works from the separate discipline of feminist moral theory may advance a feminist form of will to power ethics. Feminist reflection upon the dualistic philosophical basis of modern androcentric power invites further speculation upon the utility of the nondual philosophies of yoga, including those found in Vedāntic texts like the Bhagavad Gītā, for such an endeavour. Because yoga utilises asceticism-based practices of the self as its primary means for moulding moral subjects, it is comparable to the Greco-Roman will to power ethics described in Foucault’s final works. On the other hand, yoga’s nondual telos may present certain ethical possibilities that dualistic constructs like the Greco-Roman model cannot. Indeed, by practicing nonduality through yoga, contemporary women and others may be engaging in a practice of freedom in the most essential sense. Acknowledgements Although the process of completing a Ph.D. is solitary by nature, this text owes its existence to a diverse collection of individuals who cannot go unrecognised. First and foremost, I am indebted to my supervisor, Dr. Elizabeth McMahon. Without her forbearance and support, this project would have never been completed. I am also deeply grateful for the encouragement I received throughout my candidature from Dr. Anne Brewster, Dr. Paul Dawson, Dr. Suzanne Eggins, and the other academics and staff at the School of English, Media and Performing Arts. I am also forever indebted to my dear friend Lauri Beck Martin (and the whole Martin clan) for providing a real family for a wandering American with no practical experience living abroad. Thank you for feeding, entertaining, and caring for me – and most of all, for showing me the true meaning of family. I would also like to extend my love and thanks to my other friends and colleagues from UNSW, Sydney, and abroad: Saul Betmead, Emily Brayshaw, Gabrielle Brinsmead, Benedict Ciantar, Phyllis DeJaynes, Eric Johnson, Benjamin Miller, Jeff Parker, Amyn Rafiq, Dr. Barbara Redinger, Morgwn Rimel, and Dr. Blanca Tovias de Plaisted. I am further blessed by the enduring support I have received from the members of Sydney’s yoga community. Many heartfelt thanks go out to Nicole and Philip Goodwin from Bodymindlife Yoga for placing their trust in me as a newly certified teacher. Your unwavering support and guidance have been instrumental in helping me become the teacher (and person) I am today. I am also deeply indebted to my dear friend and fellow teacher Ingrid Gravestein for her wise counsel and myriad kindnesses. I would also like to extend a heartfelt namaste to the other fine teachers and staff at Bodymindlife Yoga, Corepower Yoga in Denver, and others who I have encountered during my yogic journey. I would also like to acknowledge and thank my students at Bodymindlife Yoga who, in true yogic fashion, have shown me the way just as often as I have led them. Finally, I am much obliged to my aunt, Sandra Marsh, for the financial support I received in the final days of my candidature. vande gurūnām caranāravinde samdarsita-svātma-sukhāvabodhe. Tat tvam asi. I worship the lotus feet of all the gurus who awaken and manifest joy in oneself. Thou art that. Table of Contents Prologue 1 Chapter One: The Will to Power Ethics of Nietzsche and Foucault 15 Chapter Two: Asceticism and Feminist Praxis 75 Chapter Three: Toward a Feminist Will to Power Ethics 126 Chapter Four: Yoga as a Practice of Feminist s/Self-Actualisation 174 Epilogue 251 Chronology of Selected Works 261 Bibliography 262 Prologue The time has come to philosophize. — Jean-François Lyotard1 Thirty years ago Jean-François Lyotard declared late modernity the era of sustained and pervasive ‘incredulity toward metanarratives’; an economical perception that has resonated with many contemporary scholars and assumed a sort of iconic status (Postmodern xxiv).2 As Terry Eagleton observes, this incredulity toward metanarratives has produced some ‘genuinely radical effects’ as academics and others turned a sceptical eye toward discourses asserting any absolute, monological claim to truth (Ideology 378). The late modern turn away from metanarrative is particularly apparent in the discipline of ethics where less certain and more relativistic approaches including perspectivism, pragmatics, and weak thought (il pensiero debole)3 have assumed the authority once afforded to only God and reason. This movement away from the universal and toward the local and relative has given rise to a new intellectual terrain which is marked chiefly by what Lyotard calls as ‘islands of determinism’ (Condition 59). These tentative, highly circumscribed territories are now the key sites for grounding ethical thought and action in a world where traditional sources and structures of ethical guidance have lost their authority. Notwithstanding the utility of Lyotard’s analysis of the period or the brilliance of his epistemic catchphrase, it nonetheless seems inaccurate to assert late modernity 1 The Differend (xiii). 2 Like many other scholars, Lyotard uses the term ‘postmodernity’ to describe the contemporary ethos. The current study will utilise the alternative ‘late modernity’ to emphasise the salient continuities that exist between the prior epoch and the present one. For a more detailed discussion of this issue, see C. Barry Chabot’s “The Problem of the Postmodern”. Graham Ward’s The Postmodern God and David Ray Griffin’s Introduction to Spirituality and Society are also useful for illuminating the spiritual issues of the late modern era. 3 Il pensiero debole, which utilises certain components of Nietzschean thought, is one of the central concepts of Gianni Vattimo’s philosophy. See David Rose’s “The Ethical Claims of Il Pensiero Debole” for an overview. 1 has completely renounced the urge toward metanarrative. The contemporary resurgence of fundamentalist religions in many regions of the world offers a particularly vivid example of the enduring nature of metanarratives. Perhaps paradoxically, the contemporary Western academy – one of the most productive sites for the ongoing interrogation of the grand narratives of reason, science, and progress – represents another. For if the academy is one of the chief cultural sites for the continuing contestation of metanarrative, it is also home to a revival of a very ancient story of the world as flux, a recurrence perhaps fostered by what Donna Haraway describes as our increasing inability to deny the ‘ferocity of the transformations lived in daily life throughout the world’ (Modest_Witness 4). If, as Haraway asserts, the current era signals the end of the ‘Greatest Story Ever Told’ – the silencing of an ‘ethnospecific Western philosophical narrative’ of stable actors and actants – then it also bears witness to the return of a subjugated metanarrative of continual change and endless transformation. This metanarrative of flux manifests in numerous ways including in the late modern propensity for ignoring tradition; resisting certainty and resolution; rejecting fixed notions of reality, knowledge, and method; accepting complexity, multiplicity, contradiction, and playfulness; and disrupting binaristic, bounded, or hierarchical ways organising reality.4 Although the metanarrative of flux has many possible origins, some might trace it to Heraclitus of Ephesus, an obscure Pre-Socratic philosopher who lived five hundred years before the Common Era. Heraclitus, whose philosophy is known to contemporary audiences only from fragments and second-hand references, asserted that ‘men should try to comprehend the underlying coherence of things’ and then proposed a river metaphor to illustrate his fundamental belief in the ‘absolute 4 This list is indebted to Elizabeth Atkinson’s analysis of the characteristics

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