Abstract

The aim of this study is to illuminate in a novel and original manner the political and ethical character of Nietzche's project of revaluation and to demonstrate its continued import and significance for thinking on culture and society today. In order to achieve this, I have placed Nietzsche's work in relation to the fiction, poetry, and prose of D.H. Lawrence, who, it is argued, provides the most imaginative and vital development of the above. In turn, Lawrence's thinking is exposed to more recent theoretical developments, thereby giving a good indication of the wider philosophical and political traditions within which the Nietzschean narrative of revaluation is produced, circulated, and maintained - and those against which it moves. It is argued that this narrative, although now widely studied and debated, remains an illicit and marginalized form of philosophical discourse; one that is often derided and condemned by those whose own narratives form the dominant and legitimized language games within modern liberal society. Nietzsche's philosophy thus provides a vital counter-discourse which allows things to be said and voices to be heard that few other forms of philosophical discourse dare to allow. It is crucial, therefore, that such a text be explored, developed, and enabled to perform a role in as wide a social arena as possible. In attempting to do this over the course of the five chapters that make up the work, several of the major themes and concerns of Nietzschean and post-Nietzschean philosophy, such as power and the reconfiguration of the subject, are examined at length and the thesis provides an exciting contribution both to Nietzsche studies and to the critical work on Lawrence, demonstrating the validity of Foucault's contention that the relation between philosophy, literature, and politics is permanent and fundamental. It is concluded that Nietzsche's and Lawrence's political thinking is of most interest and use to us today when it becomes molecularized and minoritarianized; a politics of desire that frees itself from molar ambition and ascetic militancy, and, perhaps, opens the way not to fascism as is often feared, but, on the contrary, to a radically new notion of democracy: the democracy of touch.