Is friendship possible with the dead? On love and solidarity with Bataille and Nietzsche

Verkerk, W. AMITY: The Journal of Friendship Studies (2024) 8:1, 27-38.  https://doi.org/10.5518/AMITY/39

ABSTRACT: This article proposes that Bataille’s writings on Nietzsche demonstrate a love and solidarity that is a testament to the posthumous activity of friendship. In doing so it argues, against Aristotle and Derrida, that friendship is possible with the dead. I turn to Nietzsche’s own writings to show an alternative account of friendship in which he claims that he is bringing into existence future philosophers and free spirits, posing himself as a friend to his readers, suggesting that he will continue to offer his friendship to those able to receive it after his death. Following Joanne Faulkner’s analysis of the necromantic art of revival, I propose that Nietzsche is resurrected by Bataille when he brings him into his lived experiences and writings. Bataille’s writings in the Summa Atheologica elucidate his attempt to receive and resurrect the thinking and spirit of Nietzsche. He was also one of the first to denounce the use of Nietzsche by the Nazis in the journal Acéphale. Bataille explains that Nietzsche’s concept of force is interested in collective liberation and individual sovereignty and not in the alienation and enslavement required for fascism to succeed. He shows methodological and political solidarity with his dead friend by accepting his philosophical gifts and continuing the Nietzschean project of self-overcoming with both resonance and departure. In doing so, Bataille demonstrates the necromantic art of posthumous friendship and the role of the community without community in the practice of philosophy.