| In The Birth of Tragedy Nietzsche says that in dance, the greatest strength is only potential and that strength is betrayed by the suppleness of movement (BT, 46). This thesis has found that dance, for Nietzsche, is not force itself; dance censors force through form. As opposed to aligning dance simply with Apollo, however, we have ultimately found Nietzsche's concept of dance at the heart of Nietzsche's dichotomy of art. Dance is joyful and free for Nietzsche in the sense that dance is the very experience of tragic intuition. Derrida, at the end of Force and Signification, appears to interpret the concept of dance otherwise, equating it with the triumph of force over form in the work of Nietzsche. In order to consolidate the weight of this thesis' argument about dance, we will conclude by briefly highlighting how Derrida sees writing, as opposed to dance, as the representation of the victory of form over force: "we would have to choose then, between writing and dance" (Derrida, 34). Through this brief analysis of Derrida's essay, we will seek to consolidate a pivotal argument in this thesis: Nietzsche's concept of dance is in fact ultimately representative of the victory of form. This thesis has shown that dance is integral to Nietzsche's philosophy due to its articulation of the force/form couple - the concept of dance is embedded in Nietzsche's aesthetic theory for the way it enacts the event of representation in the aesthetic state. We have found that dance is at the core of Nietzsche's theory of knowledge and that it participates in Nietzsche's critique of language. |
