The Disaster of Colonial Narcissism

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 Narcissus in a "crippling solipsism." In seeking to sow the seeds for an effective response, the 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 recognise 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.