My interview with Prof. James Porter started with a discussion about his concerns with clarity and the importance of maintaining a connection between language and life. Then I asked him Porter about how his interest in Nietzsche began and about his interpretation of Nietzsche’s concept of the Dionysian, which relates to metaphysics and an awareness of the desires underlying our metaphysical projects.
We discussed how the unity of authorial voice or identity (e.g., in the case of Homer) can dissolve into a polyphony of perspectives and voices, and how that affects our relationship with the authors’ texts.
With reference to the cynics and Foucault’s attention to them, he pointed out that being a critic of dominant discourses can be grasped as an ontological status, a form of life, rather than merely a way of using language. He also shares personal memories of attending a seminar with Michel Foucault at Berkeley and we briefly touched on his arguments regarding the continuity in Foucault’s work (e.g., why Foucault’s late turn to antiquity was not a detour but a return to concerns present from the start).
James I. Porter is the Irving Stone Professor in Literature and Distinguished Professor in Rhetoric at UC Berkeley. He is a leading scholar of classical antiquity, aesthetic and literary theory, Nietzsche, and Foucault studies. His books include:
- Nietzsche and the Philology of the Future
- The Invention of Dionysus: An Essay on “The Birth of Tragedy”
- Nietzsche and Literary Studies (Edited)
- Homer: The Very Idea
His articles on Michel Foucault include:
- Foucault, Kant, and Antiquity. Representations, 165(1), 120-143.
- The cynics with and without foucault. Arethusa, 56(3), 363-389.
- Time for Foucault? Reflections on the Roman self from Seneca to Augustine. Foucault Studies, 113-133.
- Foucault’s Antiquity. Classics and the Uses of Reception, 168-79.
- Foucault’s ascetic ancients. Phoenix, 59(1/2), 121-132.
Learn more about James I. Porter: https://vcresearch.berkeley.edu/faculty/james-porter