Narcissism and the Literary Libido

Rhetoric, Text, and Subjectivity

Marshall W. Alcorn Jr.

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 1997
• Print ISBN: 9780814706657
• eBook ISBN: 9780814705476
• Topic: Littérature
• Subtopic: Théorie de la critique littéraire

What is it that makes language powerful? This book uses the psychoanalytic concepts of narcissism and libidinal investment to explain how rhetoric compels us and how it can effect change.
The works of Joseph Conrad, James Baldwin, Michael Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Arthur Miller, D.H. Lawrence, Ben Jonson, George Orwell, and others are the basis of this thoughtful exploration of the relationship between language and subject. Bringing together ideas from Freudian, post- Freudian, Lacanian, and post-structuralist schools, Alcorn investigates the power of the text that underlies the reader response approach to literature in a strikingly new way. He shows how the production of literary texts begins and ends with narcissistic self-love, and also shows how the reader's interest in these texts is directed by libidinal investment.
Psychoanalysts, psychologists, and lovers of literature will enjoy Alcorn's diverse and far-reaching insights into classic and contemporary writers and thinkers.

ONE
Political Ties and Libidinal Ruptures: Narcissism as the Origin and End of Textual Production

Ideology necessarily implies the libidinal investment of the individual subject.

Jameson, The Political Unconscious

This book is about change—changes in people, changes in value, changes in thinking, changes in perception, changes in attention, and changes in the intensity of attention. This subtle continuum between changes in people and changes in the intensity of attention is part of the complexity of change. Because readers and teachers direct (and to some extent control) acts of attention, a better understanding of this continuum is important. We need a theoretical framework that will help us understand how changes in the intensity of attention affect social action and value.

There are many simple ways to explain changes in human behavior. People will change what they do if they are threatened by weapons or their paychecks are withheld. People will also change as a result of changes in the material conditions of their life. New technologies can change jobs and in so doing often change attitudes as well. In the liberal arts, however, there has been a long-standing assumption that language, in and of itself, can cause change. This power, located ambiguously in language, has been traditionally termed rhetoric. Rhetoric designates a force in language manipulating how people experience value. Too often, this assumption about the power of rhetoric to affect change is either totally dismissed as wishful thinking or so crudely believed that different political groups are willing to harm others in their attempt to control or regulate language use.

Because of the importance of human change, both social and psychological, we must investigate more thoroughly the subtle resources of rhetoric. For many scholars, rhetoric refers to a formal study of language and communication. Rhetoric is concerned with the rules, strategies, and structures of discourse. For others, rhetoric describes the experience of a discourse stimulating change. This often ignored relationship between the structure and the experience of language is another concern of my study. The theoretical ideas that we entertain need to be supported by our experiences and our empirical observations. Theoretical discussions of language should help us make better sense of day-to-day experiences.

Kenneth Burke, whose study of rhetoric was broadened by his study of psychoanalytic theory, made an important contribution to understanding puzzling relations between language and experience when he equated the mechanism of rhetoric with identification. We are prompted to agree with speakers, he says, when we come to identify with them. In many respects, this book pursues Burke’s interest in the relationship between rhetoric and identification.¹ Identification, however, is a complex and unwieldy concept. The term applies equally well to situations where we imagine ourselves as different from what we are, as we try to imagine ourselves as like another, and situations where we imagine others as different from what they are, because we want them to be like ourselves. In the former case, we try to change ourselves in order to be more like others. In the latter case, we try to change—or perceive others differently—in order treat them like ourselves. Identification is crucial for all rhetorical functions, but the term identification oversimplifies the complexity of the psychological processes involved in responding to the discourse of others. For reasons I soon make clear, I have decided to elaborate on Burke’s term, identification, by giving special emphasis to another related term, narcissism. Recent study of narcissistic processes has yielded a more complete understanding of the various forms and intensities of identification.

The term narcissism is associated with the Greek myth of Narcissus and its theme of self-love, and is used by both psychoanalysts and literary critics to describe a wide range of conscious and unconscious, interpersonal and intrapersonal phenomena. If we turn to Freud to discover precisely what narcissism means, however, we are likely to turn away more confused. In his 1910 footnote to “Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality,” Freud associated narcissism with autoerotic self stimulation and speculated that such tendencies could explain homosexuality.² By 1914 Freud saw wider applications for the concept of libidinal “self-love.” In “On Narcissism: An Introduction,” Freud used the concept of narcissistic cathexis (the self’s investing energy in itself) to explain narcissistic rewards to be gained from sleep, schizophrenia, and hypochondria.³ These conditions, Freud postulated, offer satisfaction because they offer a regressive experience of returning to early childhood’s blissful oneness with the mother. Freud still imagined narcissism as a particularly self-reflexive dimension of experiencing and pursuing desire, but he began to take an interest in the concept’s potential to make sense of various transformations of libido. In his account of mourning in 1917, Freud explained the mourner’s loss of “libidinal” interest in the external world in terms of narcissism. Mourners, he suggested, lose interest in the outside world because they have “narcissistically” withdrawn libido into the self.

Freud’s concern for the puzzling symptoms of mourning, profound dejection, cessation of interest in the external world, inability to love, general inhibition of all activity, and a lowering of self-esteem, indicates an important truth about the nature of human libidinal attachments. People seldom respond to major loss by simply choosing and pursing a new object of desire. Instead, people suffer a feeling of emptiness that must be “worked through” before “transformed libido” can be directed to new objects. A physically painful experience of emptiness must be suffered by the self; a complex process of suffering must be accepted and endured before “libido” can be redirected again to the outside world. If an old refrigerator quits working, people typically junk it and eagerly go out to buy a new model. If “Lassie” dies, however, no one quickly dumps the body and walks happily to a well-stocked pet store. Changes in deeply invested objects of human desire are not simple affairs. Changes in desire often require complicated changes in people. To explain these changes adequately, one must understand Freud’s observations about “transformations in libido” and its relation to narcissism.

Literary theory and rhetorical theory most often talk about transformations in value, rather than transformations in libido. We often think of changes in value as a rational (or an irrational) process that proceeds forward as if the subject were an inert appendage being dragged along by other very different forces. In some cases this is true; but it is not true in those cases that affect us most. As Jameson’s quote (see chap, epigraph) suggests, major transformations in value must occur first at the level of transformations in the “libidinal investment of the individual subject.” The changes that most require rhetorical skill, those made difficult because of deep investments in ideas and values, require complex libidinal transformations.

My intention in this book is to demonstrate that the central focus for rhetorical study should not be language exclusively, but should include the relations between language and libidinal structures. Libidinal structures are the components of self-structure. These structures are composed by our interaction with language and experience and they modify our sense of both ourselves and the world. If we look carefully at literary language, we can see interactions between self-structure and libidinal structure driving rhetorical operations. In order to understand this claim, however, we must develop a greater understanding of libido. I have claimed that the concept of identification can be more thoroughly understood by examining psychoanalytic research on narcissism. I also want to suggest that narcissism can be more thoroughly understood if we examine its relationship to libidinal transformations.

The concept of libido has always been charged with ambiguity, but psychoanalytic theory has found the term very handy for discussing the flow of human desire and for describing changes in the object or intensity of desire. Heinz Kohut talks of libido as a force that makes people and objects seem interesting. Libido is an energy investing objects (both human beings in the psychoanalytic sense of the term and material everyday objects like cars and clothes) with appeal and desirability.⁴ In the crudest sense, libido is the force of sexual attraction. This sexual dimension should not be underestimated. Stephen Mitchell points out that “sex is a powerful organizer of experience,” subtly affecting the tone of our perceptions.⁵ In common experience, however, the sexual energy of libido often seems quite diffuse. People are libidinally invested in many objects—clothes, cars, computers, guns, coffee makers. This does not mean that there is an explicit sexual experience generated by these objects. But it does mean that the investments made in these objects are not trivial. How can we understand this attachment? How can we understand, for example, the reluctance of the adult to junk an old coffee maker?

Mitchell’s discussion of the child’s early “sexual” experiences is helpful here: “Bodily sensations, processes, and events dominate the child’s early experience. . . . The child draws on and generalizes from the major patterns of bodily experience in constructing and representing a view of the world and other people.”⁶ These early constructions and representations are linked to strong feelings of pleasure and pain, and are “libidinal” systems of fantasy and memory that become building blocks for experience and self-identity. Because infantile sexuality is so poorly understood, libidinal perception and libidinal experience are also poorly understood. But it is clear that some modes of thinking and perceiving are especially energetic and linked to bodily experience. This form of experience seems related to the idea of “gut level” experience. It is similar to the child’s experience of the world, because this form of thinking is experienced in the body, not just in the mind. It is more “attached” to things—attached, for example, to old clothes or old coffee makers. Consequently, it is a mode of thinking more vivid, more intense, and more interesting than usual.

In addition, it operates according to its own principles, often indifferent to the demands of rational thought. Both Freud and Lacan argued that humans develop logical abstract thought in order to free themselves from childlike attachments to objects and images. But logic and abstract thought do not end more primitive thought attached to objects; it simply pushes it into the unconscious. According to Freud, “The system Ucs contains the thing-cathexes [the libidinal investments] of the objects, the first and true object-cathexes.”⁷ We might thus consider the unconscious not simply as a reservoir of repressed or forgotten memories, but as a system of unconscious libidinal attachments that affects our attention to and response to conscious objects.

Understood in the broadest sense, libido is a “psychic energy” that can invest almost anything with an attractiveness that does not at all seem sexual. Both advertising and art attempt to orchestrate the flow of libido in order to reposition or revalue particular cultural items, ideas, or situations. The glamorous blonde draped languorously over the hood of the red sports car may be “sexy” in the literal sense of the word, but her presence bestows the car with a “sexiness” of another order. The car becomes the center of an acquisitive gaze that makes all its details seem glamorous and noteworthy. Clearly, an understanding of libidinal “flow” can contribute to our understanding of rhetoric. The car ad example makes it clear that the cold metallic and mechanical structures of a vehicle can become rhetorically enhanced by means of libidinal manipulations. Advertisers know they can manipulate us into feeling an attachment for the car if they can first elicit an attachment we already have for the blonde.

Although narcissism is usually associated with self-love, it is rather easy to see how the admiration of cars and many other fashionably produced objects can be as narcissistic as gazing in a mirror. When we are libidinally invested in cars, it is often not the cars that we actually care about; we care about ourselves. In looking at the car, we are concerned about our own self-image.⁸ The car takes on value because we project something narcissistic about ourselves into it. The blonde does not give the car her sex appeal simply by appearing with it. We create the glamour of both the woman and the car because we project glamour onto the object. We are creatures of history and culture, and this makes us active and not passive in the creation of our own feelings. We project libidinal qualities onto objects—cars and blondes—according to complicated rules of status, gender, memory, and mood.

In the Analysis of the Self, a ground-breaking book on the concept of narcissism, Kohut observes that whereas narcissism is usually associated with self-love (or the libidinal investment of the self), narcissism actually supports a wide array of libidinal investments. People, material objects, human activities, and even thoughts can be invested with “narcissistic libido.” Narcissistic libido, not only for Kohut (unlike Freud), contributes to “mature object relationships” (to healthy human relationships). It also forms “the main source of libidinal fuel for some of the socioculturally important activities which are subsumed under the term creativity.”⁹ Artists, Kohut argues, direct and invest “narcissistic libido” when they spend enormous time and effort in shaping a work—an apparently inconsequential flow of words or a squat block of wood—that becomes singularly important because it seems to “contain” or “express” a deeply human feeling.

Narcissistic libido helps to produce a work of art, and, in a different way, makes a work of art interesting. Narcissistic libido accounts for the laborious attention that critics give to such seemingly inconsequential products. The uninitiated often find art criticism tiresome, but the art critic usually takes great pleasure in the inspection, analysis, and discussion of art. Minute details that would seem accidental or irrelevant to many people appear full of meaning and consequence. Artworks repay such attention because they, in some manner, initiate complex imaginative experience and “gratify” the narcissistic libido of those who invest time in them.

People who appreciate art claim that it prompts them to see things differently, that is, to experience events differently. We sometimes imagine that these events are caused by the external object, but in reality these experiences are caused by the interaction between the observer and the object observed. These experiences occur when observers “invest” something of themselves in the object.

This notion of “investment” is an important idea; we might understand it best by considering our relationship to people. When narcissistic libido is invested in people, narcissistic needs can give people a special aura of “grandeur” or desirability. Kohut argues that this grandeur is the result of narcissistic libidinal investments. This grandeur is produced by an investment of “narcissistic libido” because an unconscious aspect of the observer’s self-structure makes the person observed seem attractive. Part of the psychic structure missing in the observer is perceived as existing in the object observed. Kohut points out:

The intensity of the search for and of the dependency on these objects [people] is due to the fact that they are striven for as a substitute for the missing segments of the psychic structure. They are not objects (in the psychological sense of the term) since they are not loved or admired for their attributes, and the actual features of their personalities, and their actions, are only dimly recognized.¹⁰

In Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, Linda Loman’s attachment to Willy illustrates the commonplace truth of Kohut’s ideas. Linda “more than loves” Willy, Miller writes, “she admires him as though his mercurial nature, his temper, his massive dreams and little cruelties served her only as sharp reminders of the turbulent longings within him, longings which she shares but lacks the temperament to utter and follow to their end.”¹¹ Because Willy serves Linda as a substitute for a missing part of her own nature, Linda does not see him fully. She is repeatedly hurt by his failings and his “little cruelties.” But, as Miller observes, she has developed an “iron repression of her exceptions to Willy’s behavior.”

In this example, as in many others, the investment of narcissistic libido in objects...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword by Jeffrey Berman
• Acknowledgments
• 1. Political Ties and Libidinal Ruptures: Narcissism as the Origin and End of Textual Production
• 2. Self-Structure as a Rhetorical Device: Modern Ethos and the Divisiveness of the Self
• 3. Projection and the Resistance of the Signifier: A Reader-Response Theory of Textual Presence
• 4. Character, Plot, and Imagery: Mechanisms That Shift Narcissistic Investments
• 5. Language and the Substance of the Self: A Lacanian Perspective
• 6. Language and the Substance of the Self: A Lacanian Perspective
• 7. Conclusion: What Do We Do with Rhetorical Criticism?
• Bibliography
• Index