paul-denicola-literature-pure-mediality

end in the communicative process. Rather, our perspective on language must move from
a tool which signifies something outside of itself, towards an infinite chain of signifiers
that point only to themselves. This chapter will examine the movement away from a
teleological view of the world and its inherent opposing structures toward the evolution
of what has been referred to as the Pure Mediality of which Kafka’s writing partakes.
2.2 Nietzsche and Binary Opposition:
It is in the work of Nietzsche that we are provided with an entryway into the nineteenth
century’s discontent with teleology. In his declaration of the “death of god” in The Gay
Science (108) Nietzsche accomplishes a deconstruction of the current human system of
values, a metaphysical system in the sense of its hierarchization of opposites. Nietzsche
found humanity to be engaged in a valuation process which favored being over
becoming, foundation over surface, good over evil and end over process. In light of this,
his agenda becomes clear right away:
To demonstrate the absolute homogeneity of all events and the application of
moral distinctions as conditioned by perspective; to demonstrate how everything
praised as moral is identical in essence with everything immoral and was made
possible as in every development of morality with immoral means and for
immoral ends-; how, on the other hand, everything decried as immoral is
considered, higher and more essential... (Will To Power 155).
This desire to unmask as fiction the teleological world view is apparent in The Will To
Power where he states: “There exists neither ‘spirit’, nor ‘reason’ nor ‘thinking’, nor
‘consciousness’, nor ‘soul’, nor ‘will’, nor ‘truth’: all are fictions that are of no use”
21