Here is Eric Gans, back in 1998, presenting the problem of resentment in all its knottiness: Resentment is the one category that cannot be deconstructed. Nietzsche, who discovered the power of resentment, was destroyed by it all the same. For to discover resentment in another is at the same moment to discover it in oneself. Only resentment can know resentment; yet resentment knows nothing since it distorts the reality of what it observes. Nor can anyone reveal resentment without being contaminated by it; history only gives us models for putting it off, for spreading it thin enough to let some light pass through its opacity. No “genealogy,” no act of deconstruction can separate itself from the construction of the order it resents. No use of language can represent, and defer by representing, its own resentment, yet all of culture is nothing but this attempt. (Chronicle 144, “Beyond ‘Generative Anthropology’ I. Deferring Resentment”)
Resentment
Resentment
Resentment
Here is Eric Gans, back in 1998, presenting the problem of resentment in all its knottiness: Resentment is the one category that cannot be deconstructed. Nietzsche, who discovered the power of resentment, was destroyed by it all the same. For to discover resentment in another is at the same moment to discover it in oneself. Only resentment can know resentment; yet resentment knows nothing since it distorts the reality of what it observes. Nor can anyone reveal resentment without being contaminated by it; history only gives us models for putting it off, for spreading it thin enough to let some light pass through its opacity. No “genealogy,” no act of deconstruction can separate itself from the construction of the order it resents. No use of language can represent, and defer by representing, its own resentment, yet all of culture is nothing but this attempt. (Chronicle 144, “Beyond ‘Generative Anthropology’ I. Deferring Resentment”)