Considerations on narcissism and its articulations with jouissance in the capitalist social relation

Abstract

Freud situated narcissism as an important step in psychic constitution for the formation of the Ego and its identifications. Starting from these coordinates, Lacan investigated the specular logic, emphasizing the field of the gaze, and concluded that aggressivity directed at the other is correlative to narcissistic grammar. Both formulations show that, by operating toward the establishment of a subject, the narcissistic passage of psychic structuring does not exclude effects on the fabric of the relationship with the other, which also interferes with the discursive relationship that organizes the polis. Based on experiences of listening and gazing, we researched some elements of our contemporary social bond through the collection and recording of scenes from the polis. In the methodological path of producing written narratives of everyday scenes, mediated by reading-listening in alterity constituted by the research group (Iribarry, 2003), we ended up witnessing insignia of the narcissistic field in the social bond. We also confronted the signifying insistence of the remnants of coloniality that pointed to racist jouissance marking racialized bodies, promoting the maintenance of power structures. Finally, these findings pointed to the fact that the social instrumentalization of jouissance goes hand in hand with the social instrumentalization of hatred and (in)difference.