Publisher's Synopsis
"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.
