Nietzsche and Friendship — with Willow Verkerk

Philosophy scholar and author Willow Verkerk sits down with Am Johal to discuss Nietzsche and his ideas of friendship, as well as her current work on the Gendered Mimesis project at KU Leuven.

Willow compares Nietzsche’s more agonistic notion of friendship with other philosophers like Aristotle, Kant, Derrida – and draws from Luce Irigaray to consider friendship from a more gendered lens. Willow also speaks about her creative writing in the past as a form of expression, and discusses her current work on Gendered Mimesis Project, from which she is looking to trace the genealogies of gendered-being by drawing from Adriana Cavarero, Judith Butler, and Catherine Malabou.

Full episode details: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/189-willow-verkerk.html

Read the transcript: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/transcripts/189-willow-verkerk.html

Resources:
Willow Verkerk: https://philosophy.ubc.ca/profile/willow-verkerk/
Nietzsche and Friendship: https://www.bloomsbury.com/ca/nietzsche-and-friendship-9781350047341/
Gendered Mimesis project: http://www.homomimeticus.eu/gendered-mimesis-c1/
Willow Verkerk at KU Leuven: https://hiw.kuleuven.be/hua/about/staff-hua/00060614
Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/555192/thus-spoke-zarathustra-by-friedrich-nietzsche-translated-with-a-preface-by-walter-kaufmann/9780140047486

Bio:
Willow Verkerk is a Vancouver based scholar and author who has taught philosophy both within and outside of the academy in Europe, the UK, and Canada. She has published numerous academic essays on friendship, feminist activism, and gender identity and is the author of Nietzsche and Friendship. Willow is also an author of short fiction published in literary magazines in Canada and Europe. Her current research is concerned with providing a new account of the human subject through the philosophical concept of mimesis. Dr. Verkerk is frequently invited to speak about her research at universities and art institutions. She is passionate about communicating to diverse audiences the thinking of the three masters of suspicion- Nietzsche, Marx, and Freud- alongside a feminist politics that illuminates the importance of philosophical honesty. Willow brings philosophical frames of meaning from the foundations and legacies of critical theory to contemporary issues in both private and public life. In doing so, she connects thinkers in the history of philosophy to political and ethical studies that reflect upon the axes of oppression that are relevant today.

Cite this episode:
Chicago Style

Johal, Am. “Nietzsche and Friendship — with Willow Verkerk.” Below the Radar, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Podcast audio, October 11, 2022. https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/189-willow-verkerk.html.