Articles and Chapter by Simone Drichel (New Zealand)

The Disaster of Colonial Narcissism

(2018). American Imago, 75(3):329–364.

In The Writing of the Disaster, Maurice Blanchot includes a brief discussion of the Narcissus myth, implicitly inviting us to ask, as Claire Nouvet notes, “what is ‘disastrous’ in Narcissus’s story.” Translating this question into a postcolonial context, this essay argues that what is “disastrous” in colonial narcissism is the profound disturbance the story reveals in Narcissus’s capacity to relate to others, a disturbance which imprisons him in a “crippling solipsism.” In seeking to sow the seeds for an effective response, this paper draws on contemporary psychoanalytic theories of narcissism to propose that Narcissus’s “grandiose” disavowal of relationality is a mere smokescreen to cover up his profound vulnerability and fear: a fear of the other which originates in relational trauma. Making reference to the settler colonial context, I argue that this traumatic core of the narcissistic condition has remained largely occluded because trauma studies’ dominant event-based model of trauma is ill-equipped to recognize colonialism’s relational trauma. To break with colonial narcissism’s toxic legacy, I therefore propose, a relational trauma theory, such as it is developed in the work of D. W. Winnicott and Masud Khan, is needed.

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/702948

A forgiveness that remakes the world: Trauma, Vulnerability, and Forgiveness in the Work of Emmanuel Levinas

(2018). In Marguerite La Caze, Ed., Phenomenology and Forgiveness, pp. 43–63. London: Rowman and Littlefield International.

Trauma and its aftermath – the context within which the question of forgiveness frequently arises – is of central concern in Levinas’s later work, which develops a distinctly traumatological understanding of ethical subjectivity; however, the question of forgiveness barely arises in his work. My aim in this paper is to consider the role that trauma, vulnerability, and forgiveness play—or perhaps ought to play – in Levinas’s ethics. I argue that what is required to defend the kind of vulnerability that makes ethics possible is, in Robert Bernasconi’s words, “a forgiveness that remakes the world” (2012, p. 269); remakes it, that is to say, so that the kind of vulnerable exposure to the other that makes ethics possible can once again be risked. Drawing on relational psychoanalysis, I propose that, inasmuch as trauma is itself the result of “traumatic aloneness” at the time of traumatization (Ferenczi, 1988, p. 193), this kind of forgiveness is a relational capacity that can be acquired only in what D. W. Winnicott calls a holding environment.

https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781786607799/Phenomenology-and-Forgiveness

Emmanuel Levinas and the ‘Spectre of Masochism’: A Cross-Disciplinary Confusion of Tongues

(2019). Psychoanalysis, Self and Context, 14(1):3–22.

This article addresses persistent concerns within clinical contexts that Levinas’s ethics harbors a “masochistic” – or otherwise unwholesome – onception of subjectivity. Mobilizing Emmanuel Ghent’s distinction between masochism and surrender and extending it into ethical terrain, I argue that Levinas instead offers us an ethics of surrender. What underpins this vital distinction, I propose, is a different orientation to the question of vulnerability vis-à-vis relational trauma. I argue that post-traumatic psychopathological formations (such as masochism or narcissism) defend against relational vulnerability, a defense that manifests as a form of “ethical impairment.” Levinas’s ethical for-the-other existence, by contrast, is predicated upon a defense of relational vulnerability, as the condition of possibility for ethical subjectivity. This crucial point of difference not only explains why Levinasian ethics is not moral masochism but also invests Ghentian surrender with a decidedly ethical dimension.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/24720038.2019.1550999

Refusals of Responsibility:
A Response to Donna Orange and Robert Bernasconi

(2019). Psychoanalysis, Self and Context, 14(1):36–52.

This article responds to Donna Orange’s and Robert Bernasconi’s suggestion that I present a developmental view of ethical subject formation in “Emmanuel Levinas and the ‘specter of masochism.’” Arguing that the particular kind of development that underpins Levinas’s account is one of traumatic interruption, I ask what role the ego’s traumatic “prehistory” might play not just in constituting ethical subjectivity but also in closing it down: why is it that ethical hospitality, enabled by what Levinas calls “substitution,” so often finds lived expression in hostile refusals of responsibility? I propose that, to answer these questions, we need to consider Levinas’s “anarchic traumatism” not just from a philosophical but also from a psychoanalytic perspective.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/24720038.2019.1549899

Simone Drichel, PhD
English & Linguistics
University of Otago
PO Box 56, Dunedin 9054
New Zealand
Email Simone Drichel