Nietzsche and Anarchy by Shahin & Shahin

Author:Shahin & Shahin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Friedrich Nietzsche, philosophy, psychology, anarchism, individualism, affinity, projectuality, Elephant Editions
Published: 2016-08-14T16:00:00+00:00

8. Cultures: forms of life and culture-assemblages

I use the term ‘form of life’ to mean a broad collection of recurring and interlocking values, desires, practices, projects, norms, scripts, etc. As far as I’m aware, it was the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1958) who first used this term to think about social worlds: he writes that the ‘language games’ people play when they communicate only work against a rich and complex shared background.

An individual body can have a particular form of life, but forms of life are also shared between bodies, within groups. We can say: where two or more bodies share many overlapping patterns of valuing, desiring and acting, then they share a form of life.

How does this idea relate to assemblages and encounters? Bodies that share a form of life may often also be in some kind of stable relationship. For example, members of a herd share a tightly-knit form of life because they share the same upbringing and their conformity is continually reinforced by ongoing interactions, following the same shared scripts. Until recently, humans growing up far apart were likely to have quite different forms of life; in the 21st century, thanks to colonialism, globalisation and consumer capitalism, we probably share much more.

Although sharing a form of life – or, more generally, sharing similar projects – does not necessarily make us allies. Some forms of life may encourage strong alliances. For example, Nietzsche’s nobles are able to ‘organise for war’ because they are bound together by a shared warlike form of life. But other forms of life may encourage scattering, isolation, competition.

As well as the philosophical term ‘form of life’, we could also a more common word: culture. We have to be a bit careful, though, because this word carries a lot of baggage. For example, Nietzsche himself always uses ‘culture’ in the elitist sense of a ‘higher’ or ‘advanced’ form of life, something that belongs to aristocrats and artists. Though they didn’t agree on much else, here Nietzsche is not far from 19th century writers like the Victorian poet and critic Matthew Arnold, who defined culture as ‘the best which has been thought and said in the world’ (1869). Instead, the idea of culture we need is closer to that of the late 20th century ‘British Cultural Theorists’ like Raymond Williams. For Williams, culture meant ‘a particular way of life, whether of a people, a period, a group, or humanity’ (1976:90).

But here I also want to introduce one more idea. What does it mean to talk about a “capitalist culture”, or the culture of a “people”, or a state society or class, or whatever? On the one hand, within any social assemblage, there are shared patterns and projects; but there are also clear lines of difference. For example, all of us growing up in 21st century global capitalism are exposed to similar desires for consumer products, valuing of wealth and economic status, ways of seeing the world as made up of objects to be used, hoarded, traded, enjoyed. But there are also many very distinct forms of life within capitalism: e.

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