Contempt for the Whos? or: How to Read Nietzsche Autobiographically after the Death of the Bios

This paper examines French philosopher Sarah Kofman’s fractured relationships to her identities as Jew and woman. Active participant in postwar debates surrounding deconstruction psychoanalysis, acclaimed reader of Freud Nietzsche, interlocutor Derrida, Kofman is today most widely remembered for autobiographical writings about childhood a young Orthodox Jewish girl during the Nazi occupation Paris. mother sent pretend be daughter Christian woman, which both ensured physical survival led an uncanny Freudian doubling maternal figure, such that “Jew” “Christian” became unstable, mimetic identity categories could never again fully inhabit. The on suggesting attempt absolve German charges antisemitism oft leveled against him functioned similarly failed incomplete means asserting control over personal identity. If demonstrate Nietzsche was not fact antisemite, then she write herself into lineage Continental philosophy reclaim stable ancestry lost war. Yet concludes counter-narrative running throughout suggests awareness therefore claim father figure would always fail. thus illusion stability epitomized by reading provides interpretive thematic understand unstable post-Holocaust philosopher.