Zarathustra’s Discourses as a Survival Guide:Performing the Nietzschean Überfrau

This paper navigates the issues encountered when undertaking a feminist reading of Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1884), specifically when expanding the ontological enquiry into the dissociation between Nietzsche’s Übermensch and the neglected Überfrau. Whilst decompartmentalising Zarathustra’s Discourses ‘Of The Three Metamorphoses’ which performs as Nietzsche’s mouthpiece, Thiele (1990) informs us that the Nietzschean process of ‘Self Overcoming’ has influenced those to continue living through their ‘own justification [in an] atheistic and morally destitute world… instilling passion for greatness in a world without Gods’ (Page 11, 12).

Reflecting on the author’s performatively responsive practice, this paper articulates how the Nietzschean triad and transformational process of the Camel, the Lion, and the Child acts as a ‘guide to survival’ (and ad hominem on that which it mirrors: the Judaeo-Christian Holy Trinity). Nietzsche’s Übermensch as performed through Zarathustra, is depicted as what man becomes once he has overcome himself. Nietzsche’s misogyny, however translated, is also communicated through Zarathustra as the Übermensch ‘does not love man as he is but man as he might become’ (Gillespie, 2005: 53).

Synthesising Gillespie (2005), Irigaray (1991), Prideaux (2018) and Faulkner’s (2018) analyses of Nietzschean values through a mode of praxis investigates how post-Nietzschean theory survives within a feminist interrogation and rereading of his work. This invites a performatively adaptive enquiry into Ariana Grande’s ‘God is a Woman’ song and music video from 2018. This video, perhaps unwittingly, echoes the evolutional practice detailed through ‘The Three Metamorphoses’, unravelling the tactics required by women to survive in a Patriarchal society. The research activity has led to a performance of the Überfrau, resulting in this paper presenting Ariana Grande’s recital in ‘God is a Woman’ as a post-Nietzschean feminist depiction of ‘The Three Metamorphoses’ and, by implication, suggesting that popular culture both presents and performs the survival of the Überfrau. References: Gillespie, M.A (2005) “Slouching Toward Bethlehem to be Born”: On the Nature and Meaning of Nietzsche’s Superman in Journal of Nietzsche Studies, Autumn 2005, No.30, Penn State University Press. Thiele, L P (1990) Friedrich Nietzsche and the Politics of the Soul: A Study of Heroic Individualism, Princeton University Press, New Jersey. Keywords: Survival, Nietzsche, Feminism, Overcoming, Überfrau.