The Right to Narcissism: A Case for an Im-possible Self-love

Acknowledgments

During the writing of this book, which spanned more years than I anticipated, I experienced, like Narcissus, death and (re)birth, mourning and renewal. This work is intellectually and affectively shaped by the untimely loss of each of my parents and the joyous arrival of the ardent Seraphine Pari, allowing me to think through the limits and expansiveness of narcissism, as well as narcissism’s inextricable relationship to love of the other. While writing this book, I enjoyed the friendship and support of colleagues, friends, and family who, directly and indirectly , contributed to this project coming to fruition. I would like to express my gratitude to those colleagues in the field who invited me to share my work in speech and in print, as well as to those who provided important feedback, encouragement, and friendship: Tina Chanter, Crina Gschwandtner, Martin Hägglund, Leonard Lawlor, Dawne McCance, Elizabeth Rottenberg , Alan Schrift, and Ewa Ziarek. I am especially grateful to Elissa Marder and Kelly Oliver for the intellectual and emotional generosity each has shown me over the last few years. Michael Naas, a dear friend and mentor, has without a doubt Acknowledgments x Acknowledgments profoundly marked the course of my thinking and writing, for which I am deeply appreciative. I greatly benefitted from the Professional Development Assignment (2010–11) granted to me by the University of Memphis , which enabled me to make important strides in completing my manuscript. I am thankful to my colleagues and graduate students in the Philosophy Department at Memphis for their helpful feedback on early versions of chapters that were presented in our Research in Progress series. I am also grateful to the graduate students in my Rousseau seminar on the passions for their careful and challenging engagement with the material , which sharpened my own interpretations. Finally, I would like to extend my sincere thanks to my chair, Deborah Tollefsen , for her support during the completion of this work and for making the Memphis Philosophy Department a more familyfriendly environment. I would like to express my deep appreciation to my editor, Helen Tartar, for her generous support of my manuscript, and to Tom Lay, for his tremendous care and efficiency in assisting this first-time book author. I also would like to thank Juliann Barbato for her judicious and skillful copy editing, and Eric Newman for his patient help in the publication of this work. I am truly grateful to Billy Zane for kindly granting me permission to use his elegant and spare portrayal of Echo and Narcissus on the cover of my book. For their energy, joie de vivre, and friendship, I am indebted to Justine Malle and Joanne Molina. Finally, I thank my family , Sally and Jerry Aron, Manouchehr and Mastaneh Saghafi, Dara Saghafi and Yoli Rodriquez, for their love and support over the years. The memory of my mother, Dolores DeArmitt, accompanied me during the writing of this book. Early versions of a few sections of the book were previously published. I am grateful to the presses for granting me permission to republish them here in revised form. An abbreviated version of Chapter 3 first appeared as “On the Border between Acknowledgments xi Abjection and the Third: The (Re)Birth of Narcissus in the Works of Julia Kristeva” in Between Revolt and Affect: The Unstable Boundaries of Kristeva’s Polis, edited by Tina Chanter and Ewa Ziarek (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005). A section of Chapter 5 was first published as “The Impossible Incorporation of Narcissus: Mourning and Narcissism in Derrida” in Philosophy Today, 44, Supplement, Selected Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy (2000): 84–90. A version of Chapter 6 previously appeared as “Resonances of Echo: A Derridean Allegory” in Mosaic 41, no. 3 (2009): 89–100. The Right to Narcissism ...