Identités blessées et souffrances narcissiques-identitaires : à propos de La dictature des identités de Laurent Dubreuil

Abstract

ContextIn La dictature des identités (The Dictatorship of Identity, untranslated), Laurent Dubreuil, professor of comparative literature at Cornell University, offers an overview of the principles of identity politics as it has evolved in the United States since the late 1970s. He describes in particular some of the authoritarian aspects associated with identity politics and their extension in contemporary Western societies. ObjectiveIn this article, we first propose a summary of Laurent Dubreuil's argumentation before developing a more psychological analysis of identity politics through the prism of narcissistic-identitary suffering. Our objective is to better understand the context in which these new forms of subjectivity emerge. MethodThe methodology is mainly a theoretical and conceptual analysis of the notions of identity and narcissistic-identitary suffering. A few clinical elements illustrate the conceptual analysis. ResultsIdentity withdrawal is considered as one of the possible solutions to narcissistic-identitary suffering. Certain aspects of identity politics would seem to express a narcissistic wound from the past reenacted in the present on the social scene. This wound would be expressed essentially according to logics of narcissistic regression, masochism, and passive-active reversal. ConclusionIdentity politics risk reproducing, and extending, the pathogenic effects of traumatic experiences treated according to a logic of alienation – and this in opposition to its initial project of liberation.