STUDENTS' RESPONSES TO FOUCAULT, "NIETZSCHE, GENEALOGY, HISTORY"
With each subsequent reading from Nietzsche, I ask myself the same question: For whom is Nietzsche writing? His prose reads as if it were taken out of a diary. (But instead of talking about breakfast and similar trifles, Nietzsche writes about religion and slavery.) I also wonder who the intended audience for a diary really is. I have never kept a diary myself, but I might speculate that when one writes in such a book, the audience is not simply the author; an ideal reader may even be constructed by the author of a diary. (Chris Schatz)
One notable theme in Foucault was the discussion of Nietzsche's German words for different senses of "origin." The word ursprung belongs to what Derrida might call the same family of words as the terminology adopted by German music theorist Henrich Schenker. Schenker believed that music evolved from a single point of origin--the primal spring was for Schenker the major triad, and the musical materials of tonal music are formed from the overtones of that major triad. Schenker has been criticized for holding too limited a view of music history, and that criticism seems consistent with his understanding of musical origins only in terms of a single sense of primacy. (Chris Schatz)
What next?