From the Narcissism of Small Differences to Narcissistic Jouissance

Racism, Coloniality, Segregation, Genocide

Abstract

The purpose of this essay is to resume Freud's incursion, from the First World War, on the source of the suffering that comes from the relationships between humans, indicating the novelty that meant the concept of narcissism of small differences in the apprehension of collective movements that declare an innocuous expression of hostility to the other, or those who enact destructive and deadly actions against the other chosen as their absolute enemy. With the advent of the death drive, Freud re-dimensions the concept of narcissism of small differences and introduces the idea that the satisfaction of drives that reach the blindest fury of destruction is connected to a narcissistic jouissance [Genuβ]. This jouissance, in Lacan's reading, is an evil because it entails an evil to alterity. It is with this legacy that we propose to think about the extension of psychoanalysis to the decolonial discourse and other counter-hegemonic discourses, through interdisciplinary dialogue, in the reading of the languages of hate that we face in our time.