Nietzsche Contra Manu: Ambedkar's Nietzsche Moment and the Politics of Dalit Rage

IF 1.3 Q2 ETHNIC STUDIES

Critical Philosophy of Race Pub Date : 2023-01-01 DOI:10.5325/critphilrace.11.1.0068

K. Das

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Abstract:Echoing bell hooks's discussions on "black rage," this article explores the politics of "Dalit rage" by juxtaposing some instances of projections of Dalits as an "angry," "illiberal," and "intolerant" constituency with examples of anger from Dalit literature. While these projections in "mainstream" media and caste Hindu–dominated civil society narratives often represent them as engulfed in the emotive states marked by anger, intolerance, and impatience, the instances from Dalit literature archive a "Dalit rage" that demands to be dissociated from the Nietzschean category of ressentiment. Through B. R. Ambedkar's readings of Nietzsche in Philosophy of Hinduism and Nietzsche's readings of Manu's Manavadharmashastra in Twilight of the Idols, this article draws a fine line of differentiation between Nietzsche's contempt for ressentiment and Manu's disdain for anger. "Dalit rage" occupies a distinctly different thymotic space and articulates a Dalit predicament that exploits rage as a marker of protest, resistance, and caste-ridden social conflicts. This article shows why we cannot bracket Nietzsche's contempt for ressentiment with Manu's demands of the sudras (and, in extension, other "lower castes"/Dalits) to be "meek" by exploring Manu's perpetuation and legitimization of the varna order through a "morality of breeding" and Nietzsche's more wholesale rejection of morality as he deems it a pia fraus (moral fraud). Thus this "Dalit rage" offers us a repository of the limits of a liberal democracy and enables an Ambedkarite reading of Nietzsche whose project of constructing ubermensch is markedly different from Manu's "morality of taming" through a "morality of breeding."

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尼采反马努:安贝德卡的尼采时刻和达利特愤怒的政治

摘要:本文呼应贝尔·胡克斯关于“黑人愤怒”的讨论，通过将达利特人作为“愤怒的”、“不自由的”和“不宽容的”选民群体的一些例子与达利特文学中的愤怒例子并置于一起，探讨了“达利特愤怒”的政治。虽然“主流”媒体和种姓印度教主导的公民社会叙事中的这些预测经常将他们描绘成被愤怒、不宽容和不耐烦所标志的情感状态所吞没，但达利特文学档案中的实例需要与尼采式的怨恨分类分离开来。本文通过b.r. Ambedkar在《印度教哲学》中对尼采的解读，以及尼采在《偶像的黄昏》中对马努的《摩纳瓦达玛斯特拉》的解读，在尼采对怨恨的蔑视和马努对愤怒的蔑视之间划出一条细微的界限。“达利特的愤怒”占据了一个截然不同的胸透空间，表达了达利特的困境，将愤怒作为抗议、抵抗和种姓社会冲突的标志。这篇文章展示了为什么我们不能把尼采对怨恨的蔑视与马努对苏陀罗(以及其他“低种姓”/达利特人)的“温顺”要求相提并论，通过探索马努通过“繁殖道德”对瓦尔纳秩序的延续和合法化，以及尼采更全面地拒绝道德，因为他认为道德是一种道德欺诈。因此，这种“达利特的愤怒”为我们提供了一个自由民主的局限性的仓库，并使尼采的安贝德卡尔式阅读成为可能，尼采构建超人的计划与马努通过“繁殖道德”的“驯服道德”明显不同。

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来源期刊

Critical Philosophy of Race ETHNIC STUDIES-

CiteScore

2.30

自引率

0.00%

发文量

期刊介绍： The critical philosophy of race consists in the philosophical examination of issues raised by the concept of race, the practices and mechanisms of racialization, and the persistence of various forms of racism across the world. Critical philosophy of race is a critical enterprise in three respects: it opposes racism in all its forms; it rejects the pseudosciences of old-fashioned biological racialism; and it denies that anti-racism and anti-racialism summarily eliminate race as a meaningful category of analysis. Critical philosophy of race is a philosophical enterprise because of its engagement with traditional philosophical questions and in its readiness to engage critically some of the traditional answers.