Nothing Mat(t)ers: A Feminist Critique of Postmodernism

62 NOTHING MAT(T)ERS
misogynist. We must take him at his word, especially when the words are threats.
Misogyny is also worth taking seriously in someone who sees himself as “the first
psychologist of the eternal-womanly” (Nietzsche: 1986b, p. 75), as he says in
parable 5 of “Why I Write Such Excellent Books,” in Ecce Homo. Indeed, women
must not lose a fear of male revenge against female weakness and womanly virtues
which are antithetical to the warrior state of the Superman. Woman must overcome
her spirit for revenge and her ressentiment by affirming and becoming generous and
hearing the Superman: “Let the flash of a star glitter in your love! Let your hope be:
‘May I bear the Superman!’” (1986a, p. 92).
In Nietzsche’s work, women are craven beings with a natural slave mentality. Yet
it seems odd that while woman lacks a will to power, her “natural” submission must
continually be reinforced by making her afraid of man. Otherwise, she triumphs, but
perhaps only over the man of the herd Superman eludes woman’s dominion and
guile, and keeps her in fear. Man must overcome himself to overcome woman. But is
it only as Superman that man can overcome woman Woman is man’s basest
passion; his marriage to his creative potential is holy:
Your love for woman and woman’s love for man: ah, if only it were pity for
suffering and veiled gods! But generally two animals sense one another. But
even your best love too is only a passionate impersonation and a painful
ardour. It is a torch which should light your way to higher paths. One day you
shall love beyond yourselves! So first learn to love! For that you have had to
drink the bitter cup of your love. There is bitterness in the cup of even the best
love: thus it arouses longing for the Superman, thus it arouses thirst in you, the
creator! A creator’s thirst, arrow, and longing for the Superman: speak, my
brother, is this your will to marriage I call holy such a will and such a
marriage (1986a, p. 96).
It is shameful that the man who aspires to love and to be Superman must couple with
she who is “a little dressed-up lie” (1986a, p. 96). A tremendous will is therefore
necessary for man to create something that is not part of the stupid herd from this
coupling. Thus, Superman must grit his teeth, swallow the bitter cup, and aim
upward. And yet it must be so, for there are no Superwomen, and no woman worthy
of being Superman’s wife or mother. The only bride for Superman is eternity, as this
passage from Thus Spoke Zarathustra attests:
Oh how should I not lust for eternity and for the wedding ring of rings—the
Ring of Recurrence! Never yet did I find the woman by whom I wanted
children, unless it be this woman, whom I love: for I love you, O Eternity!
(1986a, p. 246).
But man has not yet eternity for his wife, he has woman: “Yes, I wish the earth
shook with convulsions when a saint and a goose mate together” (1986a, p. 96). Is
Superman so easily seduced then, and by a goose Could Dionysus be compromised
by so weak and insipid a creature The shroud which Nietzsche uses to make less
bitter the cup of man’s essential powerlessness to give birth in spite of the most
Dionysian or Herculean self-love, is the shroud of a joyous fatalism/fetalism before