How to Read Like a Parasite : Why the Left Got High on Nietzsche Paperback / softback

"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 ReactionHow to Read Like a Parasite overturns thewhitewashed and defanged version of Nietzsche that has been made popular by generations oftranslators and academic philosophers who have presented his work as apolitical and withouta core reactionary agenda.

The central argument of the book is that Nietzsche’s philosophydoes have a center, and that the left learns a great deal from Nietzsche when we read him asdriven by a highly sophisticated reactionary political vision that informs all his major conceptsand ideas. The most important Nietzschean concepts — from perspectivism, ressentiment, eternal return tothe 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 Parasitemakes 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.