Since Derrida’s Spurs, Nietzsche has been posed as woman. With his recent Postponements, David Farrell Krell pushes Nietzsche further into Derrida’s ‘feminine operation’. Krell claims that Derrida and Nietzsche save real women from dogmatic philosophy by writing with ‘the hand of woman’:

It is the male philosopher who believes in ‘woman’ and ‘truth’ alike, the male philosopher who, according to both Nietzsche and Derrida, proves credulous, dogmatic, and mistaken. Writing now with the other hand, as it were, both Nietzsche and Derrida record the plaint of women against ‘the foolishness of the dogmatic philosopher’ …

Does Krell see himself, then, writing with the ‘other hand’, the hand of woman?

Male philosophers dressing up like woman in order to arouse their own masculine desires does nothing to save real women from dogmatic male philosophy. Rather, inversely, their ‘operation’ saves philosophy from real women. Why do women need to write philosophy, if men can do it for them? If men can write with the hand of woman, philosophy has no need for women. Feminist philosophy, then, also becomes the domain of men.

In addition, I am suspicious of the woman Nietzsche imitates/desires. I will argue that Nietzsche desires woman as mother. He fears woman as anything else. Moreover, Nietzsche does not desire to become woman, rather, he desires to possess woman. Nietzsche’s desire, then, is not a feminine desire. It is not the desire of a woman. Rather, it is a masculine desire (the desire to possess through impregnation).

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