A how-to guide for the left on how to overcome Nietzsche’s
divisive and damaging influence.
“Beautifully
written and bursting with spirit, How to Read Like a Parasite
is destined to be vital reading.” – Matthew McManus, author of
Nietzsche and the Politics of Reaction
How
to Read Like a Parasite overturns the whitewashed and defanged
version of Nietzsche that has been made popular by generations of
translators and academic philosophers who have presented his work as
apolitical and without a core reactionary agenda.
The central argument
of the book is that Nietzsche’s philosophy does have a center, and
that the left learns a great deal from Nietzsche when we read him as
driven by a highly sophisticated reactionary political vision that
informs all his major concepts and ideas.
The most important
Nietzschean concepts — from perspectivism, ressentiment, eternal
return to the pathos of distance — are analyzed in the historical
context in which Nietzsche lived and wrote, and several case-studies
of prominent left-Nietzscheans from Jack London, Gilles Deleuze,
Wendy Brown to Huey Newton are discussed.
How to Read Like
a Parasite makes a persuasive case for how we can overcome
Nietzsche’s damaging influence on the left, showing us how to read
and understand his work without becoming victims of it.
