Secondary literature 2003

The Shortest Shadow: Nietzsche's Philosophy of the Two

Alenka Zupančič

by The Shortest Shadow_ Nietzsche'

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Synopsis

Alenka Zupančič's The Shortest Shadow: Nietzsche's Philosophy of the Two (MIT Press, 2003) argues that the decisive and underappreciated structure of Nietzsche's philosophy is a "philosophy of the Two"—not the One, not the multiple, but an irreducible minimal difference or split that is neither dialectical synthesis nor postmodern proliferation of perspectives. The book's central wager is that this Nietzschean "figure of the Two" is structurally homologous to a set of Lacanian concepts—the Real as internal fracture, the not-all, objet petit a, the logic of sexuation, sublimation, and the topology of das Ding—and that reading Nietzsche through Lacan (and vice versa) illuminates both. Part I reconstructs Nietzsche as a metapsychologist of civilization, tracing the ascetic ideal, slave morality, nihilism, and the "death of God" through Lacanian categories (the shift from the Discourse of the Master to the Discourse of the University, surplus-jouissance, the superego imperative). Part II, titled "Noon," develops the positive philosophical counterpart: Nietzsche's theory of perspectival truth, the gaze as objet a, the Nietzschean "beyond good and evil" as transgression of Nothingness-as-object into Nothingness-as-minimal-difference, and the doctrine of double affirmation (amor fati) as a non-dialectical way out of nihilism. An addendum treats love as comedy—a structural analogue of love's sublimating power—by contrasting the tragic/sublime paradigm with the comic "parallel montage" in which the Real appears as gap between two semblances. The book's answer to nihilism is not a return to positivity but a topological relocation of negativity from unattainable limit to internal minimal difference, a move that Zupančič names as the specifically Nietzschean (and Lacanian) act.

Distinctive contribution

What distinguishes The Shortest Shadow from other Lacanian readings of philosophy is its sustained, technically precise alignment of Nietzsche's philosophy with Lacanian structural concepts, pursued not as an external imposition but as a mutual illumination in which each thinker's blind spots become visible through the other. While Slavoj Žižek and other members of the Ljubljana School deploy Nietzsche incidentally, Zupančič makes Nietzsche the primary object of inquiry, showing that his apparently anti-systematic corpus conceals a rigorously topological logic—the "figure of the Two"—that runs from his theory of the event and subjectivity through his metapsychology of civilization to his positive ethics of double affirmation. This means that the book functions simultaneously as a contribution to Nietzsche scholarship (arguing against postmodern "perspectivist" appropriations), to Lacanian ethics (extending Seminar VII's account of sublimation and das Ding into a Nietzschean register), and to the theory of nihilism (redefining it not as negativity per se but as a specific topological pathology in which Nothingness becomes a transcendent object rather than an immanent minimal difference).

The book's most distinctive conceptual contribution is its account of "double affirmation" as a logical-ontological structure rather than a psychological or voluntarist attitude. Zupančič shows that the Nietzschean amor fati is structurally homologous to Lacan's not-all and to the logic of the future anterior, and that this structure constitutes the only non-nihilistic form of affirmation—one that says Yes to necessity precisely by saying Yes to contingency, thereby preventing necessity from closing in on itself. This is a genuinely novel synthesis that neither Nietzsche scholars nor Lacan scholars had made with comparable precision. The addendum on love as comedy further extends this logic in an unexpected direction, arguing that the comic structure (two semblances whose non-coincidence produces the Real as gap) is the proper structural analogue of love-as-sublimation, contrasting it with the tragic-sublime in a way that neither Lacan's Seminar VII nor standard Lacanian aesthetics had systematically developed.

Main themes

The 'figure of the Two' as Nietzsche's and Lacan's shared structural logic
Nihilism as topological pathology: Nothingness as transcendent object versus Nothingness as minimal difference
The ascetic ideal and the structural shift from the Discourse of the Master to the Discourse of the University
Sublimation and das Ding: the Real as the interval within the object, not behind it
Perspectival truth and the gaze as objet petit a: the constitutive ex-centricity of the subject
Double affirmation (amor fati) as the non-dialectical, non-nihilistic alternative
The Nietzschean event as 'One becoming Two': retroactive constitution of the subject
Beyond good and evil as transgression of Nothingness-as-object into immanent minimal difference
Love as comedy: the comic paradigm as structural model for sublimation-as-desublimation
Surplus-jouissance, the superego imperative, and the invention of enjoyment under the ascetic ideal

Chapter outline

Introduction: The Event 'Nietzsche' — p.6-33
Part I: Nietzsche the Metapsychologist — p.35-174
Part II: Noon — From Nihilism to Double Affirmation — p.131-174
Addendum: On Love as Comedy — p.169-187

Chapter summaries

Introduction: The Event 'Nietzsche' (p.6-33)

Zupančič opens by diagnosing a paradox in contemporary Nietzsche reception: the very 'jolts' of Nietzsche's style that ought to be shocking have been domesticated by being reduced to mere 'opinions,' a reduction that simultaneously esteems Nietzsche's style and neutralizes it. Against postmodern appropriations that read Nietzsche as a pluralist of perspectives and fictions, Zupančič argues that the 'nuance' in Nietzsche is never the opposite of the 'grand narrative' or the 'event' but is, rather, its precise articulation—the minimal difference that names the event's inner structure.

The Introduction's philosophical core concerns the structure of the 'event Nietzsche' itself. Drawing on Badiou's analysis of the event as immanent to its own declaration, Zupančič argues that the Nietzschean declaration does not simply announce an external event but is itself constituted as the event through the logic of a 'time loop': the subject who declares is retroactively constituted by the declaration, so that 'One becomes Two.' This is not mystical transformation but a minimal topological split—the 'edge' between two incommensurable terms—which Zupančič explicitly aligns with Lacan's formula of the sexual non-rapport. The figure of Zarathustra as 'precursor,' going under as he declares, illustrates this structure: to perish as a proclaimer is to become the thing proclaimed; the break itself is the 'something else.'

The introduction closes by establishing the book's key philosophical thesis: the Real is not situated beyond or outside representation but exists as representation's internal fracture—the split that prevents representation from coinciding with itself, not merely with its object. This 'figure of the Two' is announced as the thread connecting the metapsychological Part I with the more constructive Part II, and it immediately distinguishes the book's approach from both Hegelian dialectics (where the split is aufgehoben) and postmodern multiplicity (where the split dissolves into difference). The invocation of Malevich's artistic act as structural analogue—locating the inherent limit of a discourse and activating it as a site of creation—sets the tone for the entire project.

Key concepts: Event, Splitting of the Subject, Minimal Difference, The Act, Real, Topology Notable examples: Malevich's Suprematism; Zarathustra as 'proclaimer'; Ecce Homo's 'Ich bin ein Doppelgänger'

Part I: Nietzsche the Metapsychologist (p.35-174)

Part I is the book's longest and most diagnostically oriented section. Zupančič begins by identifying two instances where Nietzsche's metapsychology is most penetrating: the theory of the ascetic ideal and the thesis about the 'extinction of true masters,' which she rereads as an account of the structural shift from Lacan's Discourse of the Master to the Discourse of the University. Both concern a 'social recodification of enjoyment,' and reading them together reveals a structural rather than merely historical transformation. The 'death of God' is parsed carefully: it is not simply Hegel's speculative Good Friday but, crucially, the death of God-as-S1, the generative symbolic power, whose loss inaugurates the ascetic ideal in its purest (Protestant) form. The Catholic/Protestant opposition is read as two different configurations of the relationship between the visible and invisible scenes, held together by the point de capiton; Protestantism, by removing the moral-ideological question of salvation from the circuits of symbolic exchange and 'interiorizing' it, simultaneously liberates secular science and economy and creates the conditions for a universalized slave morality.

The analysis of the ascetic ideal in the Genealogy of Morals is then given its Lacanian translation: the ascetic ideal is not about moderation but about surplus-jouissance—'more! encore!'—and invents the 'second body' that is awake, charred, never weary. Zupančič coins the formulation that the ascetic ideal is 'a passion diet,' countering passions not with their absence but with a surplus of pure passion. She draws on Eric Santner's notion of 'undeadening' to show that this surplus animation binds the subject to life while preventing genuine living—a mortifying vitality. The account of guilt and punishment in the Genealogy is then reread: guilt and surplus-enjoyment are shown to be co-originary articulations of immeasurability rather than a causal sequence (guilt causing enjoyment, or vice versa). The Christian 'stroke of genius'—God sacrificing himself to pay the debt he is owed—is the move that makes guilt infinite and unrepayable, generating the superego imperative.

The section on nihilism distinguishes active and passive forms with precision. Active nihilism is a fight against semblance, a 'passion for the Real'; passive nihilism is the sedative defense against the surplus excitement generated by active nihilism. The two are not simply successive historical stages but are internally co-dependent: passive nihilism requires active nihilism as its inherent Other. Modern consumer hedonism is identified as a paradigm case of passive nihilism: the decaffeinated coffee, the sugar-free sweet, the cigarette without nicotine are not ascetic but hedonistic precisely in their structure of stimulation-plus-deactivation. The section on sublimation and the ethics of desire (drawing extensively on Seminar VII) argues that sublimation is not a turning away from drive but is the satisfaction of the drive, and that the Real is located in the interval between the object that satisfies the drive and satisfaction-as-object—not at the level of either term separately. Raising an object to the dignity of the Thing (sublimation) challenges the reality principle as ideological criterion, and the section closes with an extended discussion of how the superego imperative of enjoyment can only be countered through a Nietzschean 'yes' to the little remainder of enjoyment that persists on the subject's side.

The second half of Part I pivots to the positive philosophical dimension: perspectival truth and the gaze. Two conceptions of truth in Nietzsche are distinguished: one identifies truth with the Real as inaccessible dangerous force (requiring 'dilution' for life to be livable); the other locates truth in the structural disjunction between perspectives—not as meta-truth hovering above them but as the immanent, constitutive gap produced in the shift between them. The gaze (Blick) is identified as the structural key: drawing on Berkeley, Condillac, and Lacan's account of the mirror stage and the object-gaze, Zupančič argues that the constitution of the subject requires the irreversible expulsion of a part of itself onto the side of objects—this expelled remainder is the gaze as objet petit a. Truth is thus not a perspective on perspectives but exists as the non-coincidence between the gaze and the point of view, a structural disjunction internal to every situation. The play-within-the-play in Hamlet is analyzed at length (via Olivier's film) as an exemplary staging of this structure: the 'mousetrap' produces the gaze as the Other of perspectivity by montaging two perspectives whose non-coincidence makes the gaze appear. The section concludes with an account of the not-all: truth is not-whole not because of a portion of lie or an inert kernel of the Real that cannot be spoken, but because of a surplus—the auto-referential moment in which every truth is also a truth about itself, sticking to enunciation as well as statement. The Real is this interval between the Symbolic and the Imaginary, between knowledge and jouissance.

Key concepts: Ascetic Ideal, Discourse of the Master, Surplus-jouissance, Das Ding, Sublimation, Gaze, Not-all, Real, Perspectivism, Ethics of Psychoanalysis Notable examples: Protestant Reformation and the 'death of God'; Hamlet play-within-the-play (Olivier film); Decaffeinated coffee as passive nihilism; Condillac's statue and the mirror stage

Part II: Noon — From Nihilism to Double Affirmation (p.131-174)

Part II, organized under the heading 'Noon' (Nietzsche's figure for the moment when One becomes Two), develops the constructive philosophical alternative to nihilism. Zupančič begins by showing that Nietzsche's problem is not nothingness or negativity as such, but their insertion into the topography of truth as understood by Christianity: once the split between true and untrue falls upon the will itself, the will to truth inherently becomes the will to nothingness, and God becomes the name for Nothingness as the internal condition of all desire. Christianity does not simply posit a transcendent ideal; it makes nothingness the name for the Real, thereby denying truth to worldly objects. The process of nihilism is then the progressive separation of the two internally connected facets of the will ('to will nothingness' and 'to will something'), until one wills nothingness directly, without the concrete objects that had previously mediated it—a structure Zupančič maps onto Lacan's account of desire losing its metonymic object and circling the void.

The Lacanian theory of sexuation and the paradox of Achilles and the tortoise are mobilized to articulate two structural modes of the relationship to Nothingness. 'Man' (the masculine position) is the Achilles who can never catch up with the tortoise: metonymic pursuit of the object (objet petit a as Nothingness-as-object), always approaching but never reaching. 'Woman' (the feminine position) is the Achilles who can only pass the tortoise: she relates to the Other from an initially double or split standpoint—Nothingness as the inner difference of the same, constitutive of the not-all. 'Beyond good and evil,' Zupančič argues, means transgressing Nothingness in its first mode (as transcendent unattainable object structuring the moral dialectic) and relocating it in its second mode (as immanent minimal difference). This is not an abolition of negativity but a topological decentering: Nothingness is no longer the unattainable Thing pulling the will from outside but the inner split that makes affirmation possible.

Double affirmation (amor fati) is then elaborated as the logical-ontological structure of this decentering. If one truly wants something, one also wants the contingency that produced it; and if one wants contingency, one also wants the necessity that contingency generates. This is not voluntarist appropriation of the past ('I wanted this all along') but loving what is necessary by loving it as contingency—a structure Zupančič formalizes through the future anterior ('I will have wanted this'). The minimal difference or hiatus between the two affirmations—'white affirmation on white background,' paraphrasing Malevich's White on White—is the crack created by redoubling that prevents necessity from closing in on itself. This, Zupančič argues, is the Nietzschean alternative to both reactive nihilism and the 'ass-like' affirmation that says yes to everything: a double affirmation that holds the place for what is not, maintaining negativity as interval rather than as object.

Key concepts: Double Affirmation, Nihilism, Not-all, Objet petit a, Minimal Difference, Beyond, Topology, Sexuation Notable examples: Malevich's White on White; Zeno's paradox of Achilles and the tortoise; Nietzsche's 'Um Mittag war's, da wurde Eins zu Zwei'

Addendum: On Love as Comedy (p.169-187)

The addendum, which Zupančič herself describes as having the status of an 'essential appendage,' uses the question of love to extend and test the book's central logical structure. The addendum begins from Lacan's claim that love 'humanizes jouissance' by making it 'condescend to desire,' and asks what structural mechanism enables this. Zupančič's answer is that love operates as sublimation-as-desublimation: it dislocates the sublime object from its source of enjoyment, making jouissance itself an object of desire. This requires a distinction between desire and drive in terms of their temporality: desire is governed by metonymic succession—the object always in a different 'time zone,' always already gone when the subject arrives—while drive operates through a 'time warp' in which the impossible Real happens, rather than remaining structurally inaccessible.

The comic paradigm is then contrasted with the tragic-sublime as two different structural configurations of the relationship between the Real and appearance. In the tragic-sublime (following Kant's account and Lacan's analysis of Antigone), the Real is situated beyond the sensible, legible only in the resistance and suffering of matter—the friction between the conditional and the unconditional generating the sublime's blinding splendor, with death functioning as the limit where the two orders touch. In the comic paradigm, by contrast, the Real appears not behind appearances but as the minimal difference between two semblances—as the gap itself, rather than what lies behind it. Zupančič illustrates this with a comic scenario involving an actor mistaken for Hitler, and with Deleuze's concept of the 'parallel montage' of two semblances whose non-coincidence produces the Real as a gap-become-object.

The structural conclusion is that love belongs to the comic paradigm rather than the tragic-sublime: what distinguishes love is not that it makes the inaccessible accessible (the sublime's promise, always deferred), but that it preserves transcendence within accessibility—the miracle of the impossible that has already happened, here and now. Love's 'parallel montage' of two subjects produces the Real as the non-coincidence between them, making it an object of desire rather than an object of sublime awe. This is the structure of sublimation that 'humanizes jouissance': not elevating the object to an inaccessible dignity, but discovering in the accessible the irreducible gap that is the Real.

Key concepts: Jouissance, Sublimation, Fantasy, Objet petit a, Das Ding, The Act, Real, Desire Notable examples: Lacan's analysis of Antigone (Seminar VII); Deleuze's parallel montage; Zeuxis and Parrhasius (Seminar XI); The Hitler photograph comedy scenario

Main interlocutors

Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality
Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science
Jacques Lacan, Seminar VII (The Ethics of Psychoanalysis)
Jacques Lacan, Seminar VIII (Le transfert)
Jacques Lacan, Seminar X (L'angoisse)
Jacques Lacan, Seminar XI (The Four Fundamental Concepts)
Jacques Lacan, Seminar XVII (L'Envers de la psychanalyse)
Jacques Lacan, Seminar XX (Encore)
Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle
Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents
Alain Badiou
Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy
Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment
Eric Santner, On the Psychotheology of Everyday Life
Kazimir Malevich

Position in the corpus

The Shortest Shadow occupies a distinctive position in the Lacanian secondary corpus as the most thorough and technically precise attempt to bring Nietzsche into systematic dialogue with Lacanian structural concepts, rather than treating Nietzsche as a foil (as Lacan himself sometimes does) or using him incidentally for rhetorical effect (as in much of Žižek). Readers should approach this book after some familiarity with Lacan's Seminar VII on the ethics of psychoanalysis—since the theory of sublimation, das Ding, and the reality principle are presupposed throughout—and with Seminar XX's logic of sexuation and the not-all, which underpins Part II. The book pairs naturally with Zupančič's own Ethics of the Real (on Kant and Lacan) and with Mladen Dolar's work on the voice and sublimation, and complements Žižek's The Plague of Fantasies and The Ticklish Subject insofar as all three attempt to theorize the act and the Real in relation to ideology and nihilism. It diverges from Žižek's approach in being more strictly philosophical and less culturally illustrative, and in taking Nietzsche (rather than Hegel) as the primary philosophical interlocutor alongside Lacan.\n\nFor readers coming from Nietzsche studies rather than Lacanian theory, the book represents a significant challenge to postmodern and pluralist appropriations of Nietzsche (Deleuze's reading is engaged but also implicitly contested on the question of double affirmation). It should be read before or alongside Adrian Johnston's work on the drive and biology, and before Zupančič's later What is Sex? (2017), which extends many of the logical arguments developed here—particularly the not-all and the minimal difference—into a broader ontological framework. The corpus neighbor most closely aligned with its concerns is Zupančič's Ethics of the Real, which provides the detailed Kantian-Lacanian background for the ethical arguments that The Shortest Shadow presupposes in its treatment of sublimation and the superego.