Agenda

Interview

1. Please provide a brief outline of your training and scientific activity.
This research project aims to (re)contextualize and (re)interpret the concept of fiction by Nietzsche, focusing on the period between the first book of Human, All Too Human (1878) and Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1885). Contrary to the most studies on the subject, this research contradicts the perspective according to which fiction is an epistemological notion in Nietzsche’s thought. The relevance of fiction is profoundly displaced by this research: it is not relevant as a formal-subjective criterion of self-knowledge (“ego” or “subject” as fiction) or of the world (“reality” or “object” as fiction). For a long time, the Nietzsche-research dealt with fiction (and related concepts, such as appearance, error, illusion, lie) as a theoretical center around which a radical critique of speculative philosophy gravitated. Thus, dethroned the “ truth” as a criterion of knowledge, fiction would take its place, but this at a very high cost: for the Nietzsche-research, fiction would count as the the “truest” expression of human knowledge. The premise from which this research starts is quite different. The fiction that interests Nietzsche’s philosophy would be associated with an entirely different strategy. “False”, “deception”, “lie”, “fictitious”, “untruth”... such notions are not part of an anti-metaphysical, non-ontological grammar, something derived, for example, from the achievements of Kant’s theoretical philosophy and Kantismanism. In fact, the recurrent use of these notions by Nietzsche reflects a theoretical achievements of a still little discussed artistic tradition, namely, the pseûdos poetic tradition. Pseûdos does not simply translate a mere counter-concept to the concept of truth, but rather it represents the form of poetically founded discourse. According to this point of view, pseûdos acquires full meaning when it contradicts the belief according to which the conquest of truth supposes the prose as its main vehicle of expression. Therefore, the aesthetic-theoretical efforts of this poetic tradition basically consist by questioning the supposed identity between discourse in prose and truth. The possibility of a kind discourse based on pseûdos suggests not a “new” identity (between prose and lie, for example), but rather the attempt to liberate prose from a certain norm, namely, the one that prescribes to writing the duty to communicate true discourses. In this sense, the impulse to fiction is the best poetic attitude concerning the liberation from that identity between prose and true discourse. The pseûdos poetic way of writing, subject of the present research, understands the lie as fictitious, fictional form of prose discourse. In order to explain in what way Nietzsche belongs to the evolutionary line of prose fiction, it is necessary to understand his reflection not exactly on fiction (or lie) as a “concept”, but rather on the relevance of narrative status of writing and discourse that lends to the fiction an aesthetic function.

2. Please state your reasons for choosing Venice and the Department for your research and teaching stay.
The main reason for choosing the department is linked to the research affinity with the area of aesthetics and theory of German literature. The relevance and consistency of the research carried out by prof. doctor Claus Zittel is increasingly recognized not only in Italy and Germany, but also in Brazil.
3. Have you ever had a research collaboration with the teaching staff of Department of Linguistics and Comparative Cultural Studies in the past?
Yes, I was visiting Scholar at Stuttgart University under the supervision of prof. Dr. Claus Zittel in 2017.