Woman as Will and Representation: Nietzsche's Contribution to Postmodern Feminism

Friedrich Nietzsche is frequently dismissed as a misogynist. However, Nietzsche's texts contain many possibilities for postmodern feminism, since these texts strongly exemplify the two themes that characterize much of the post-modern feminist position: woman as multiple and woman as representation. Nietzsche redefines "truth" as a "mobile army of metaphors"; if he is right about the status of truth, then his attempt to construct a new representation or metaphor of woman can be viewed as the beginning of a radical new feminism. His texts simultaneously decry the failures of modernist feminism and illustrate the possibility of a feminist politics that is truly beyond the modern. (LC)