Narcissist Until Proven Otherwise
These days I avoid pictures of myself. I do not take selfies unless required to do so by the state. A shudder rises up in me when I see myself in a digital representation. While I have always held an aversion to my own image, I’ve recently crossed over some threshold in time where the narcissist in me is wounded by the picture-me; as if the two were at odds, as if the photographic image were a repudiation (or confirmation?) of the ideal-ego image I hold of myself; my own ego as an hallucinatory object that I have invested with libido—technically speaking. To have an ego is to be a narcissist and narcissism is an inherently dream-like position, myopic and phantasmagorical. My self phases in and out of definition, as if in a dream, painfully constellated by shards of random internet photos. It is probably the case that due to consumerism and the camera-mirrors in all of our hands, narcissism has become a kind of degree zero of self-awareness, fundamental baseline and datum of 21st century selfhood in the capitalist west; market forces prey upon and amplify our self-possession. While we all love (or hate) the dream of our favorite me, the real problem in all this is individuality as such: the lie told to us from day one that we are unique and sovereign individuals free to pursue happiness, or whatever, and to post the results on instagram. This is the story the narcissist tells themself (me) in order to live. How do we get out of this double bind? For the ego to rescue itself from the specular dream of narcissism is like trying to lift oneself up by the hair. Is there no other means of escape?
