cristina trivellin/marco caccavo - Is There Love in The Technoetic Narcissus?

so that i ran in error opposite
To that which kindled love ‘twixt man and fountain(1)

The narcissus flower just gets its name from the Sanskrit root Nar-, which indicates a very intense perfume, whose fragrance can even induce drowsiness; and of sleep seems to be sick the contemporary man who, despite having all the heuristic tools to go beyond the reflection of the mirror, is satisfied with self referential contemplation. Narcissism is indeed synonymous with an immoderate cult of one’s own egos, exclusive of any existing reality outside the world that the subject creates for himself.   The classical mythology collects archetypes and metaphors of inconveniences linked to man and to the research of his own existential reality. The neuroses that have characterized the history of mankind limiting its perceptions, are evident elements and interpretative codes to find some solution to this difficult path to recognition. The most evident neurosis of the twentieth century was undoubtedly the narcissism, which amplified a dissociative tendency from reality and from the need to hear and feel. Narcissus is slave of his own image and falls in love with it because he can not recognize the other-than-himself detached from his representation; the nymph Echo can only postpone the last syllables he pronounces, but the inability to utter the emotion produces deafness in return.

If Freud carefully studies the phenomenon, examining it from a decidedly individual, biological and biographical standpoint,we can notice a later tendency, by the psychoanalytic and cultural community, to assess the problem in relation to society, (as however Deleuze made about schizophrenia), transverse readings trying to capture reality in its interactive and relational dimension rather than in the individual’s closed bubble. Alexander Lowen, although starting from the father of psychoanalysis, describes narcissism as a both psychological and cultural condition, leading the reflection in relation with technology and future: in my opinion narcissists are perfectly adapted to the world in which they live, adhering to its values ,following its constantly changing models, feeling comfortable in its superficiality. Those having a sense of the past, seeking stability and security rather than change and having no faith in electronics , have real difficulties of adaptation. (2)

By shifting the focus from the purely psychological to the decidedly cultural phenomenon, that is then the subject of our dissertation, we note how narcissism, individualism, self-referentiality and anthropocentrism, are closely related and form the barrier that the posthuman- postnarcissus have to overcome in order to treat the wounds of an incorrect perception of his uniqueness and his own role in the world. The culture of narcissism, this incomplete heuristic, reveals a persistent inability to rip that veil of Maya beyond which we can discover continents placed over the Pillars of Hercules of one’s own limitations. We erase, with a shot of human intellect, too human, all that lies beyond the image that, once taken, does not complete anything in the centripetal knowledge excluding the worlds with which we however have to measure ourselves. The superiority attributed to man by different cultures and religions, has placed him in history as central individual, justifying his actions as the result of thought, divine gift that gives right to be measure of all things and master of them, without ever really penetrating in their deepest essence.

This separation could only bring neurosis and detachments from reality and from the anima mundi , sanctioning a conflict with the attempts to fragmentation and denial of complexity and of the many both micro and macrocosmic facets and interactions that characterize the evolution and the path of knowledge . Taking conscious distances from this dimension is not easy, since even the ruling intellectual class is still pervaded by regressive ,technophobe and conservative attitudes,.
This “ancient man" ,so important, so rich in potentials and extraordinarily self-referred, can only produce a culture reflecting this status to be preserved, thus exorcising the questioning, the crisis of the system.

Modern man finally has ecological tools and philosophies likely to break (without fearing years of bad luck ...), the mirror of dependence from logos , no more making narcissism become schizophrenia , as soliloquy of a ego little satisfied by the discovery of itself, but scented flower inserted in a biological and social ecosystem. The word should then be given to the artists’ self poiesis , to the post-humanist vocation to replace man as rich network of relationships, recovering and highlighting that communication that inevitably moves to other living realities - the vegetable, animal and micro-cellular world, in an "antropocentrifugal " attitude able to redefine or definitively open the concept of human and living.

This happens and will happen also and especially through technologies, free progress of sciences and the resulting possibilities to expand the knowledge of the world. The wind of new ,blowing as a changing force over our perceptual consciousness, still has not yet been fully recognized. The revolution of the network makes us creators of new shared codes and languages,affects the sense of self doing at a deep functional level. The world unification that is being realized by the web - writes Richard Dawkins (evolutionary biologist) - resembles the evolution of the nervous system of multicellular animals. A certain school of psychology could consider it as a reflection of the individuals’ personality development as merger of separate beginnings, distributed since early childhood.(3)

Narcissus stands as a lover towards the world he is looking for, and ,when he is reflected in its spring, is through love that he tries to establish relations. The mirror is not obstacle, but threshold in which to penetrate, deliberately becoming water, splitting and penetrating each molecule. The contemporary intellectual, mindful of his sapere aude, must assume the responsibility of the world, excluding from his horizon the violence of reducing in detail, in thing, what he doesn’t want to understand, being it plant, rock or bacterium. We therefore inscribe in the space of the old Vitruvian man all the things that a moment ago we considered noble or lowermost. In doing so, we will emerge from the anesthesia of self-referential image and culture by means of a truly democratic aesthetic. The stench smell of the reflected singularity will cover itself with the very singular fragrance of the other, in he new way of seeing ourselves and the world , that is not for us, but is us.

(1) - Dante, Divina Commedia, III Canto del Paradiso verso 17-18)
(2) - Alexandre Lowen, Il Narcisismo, l’identità negata, 1985 Feltrinelli pag. 169
(3) - Richard Dawkins, un unico individuo, L’Internazionale, 29 january 2010 pag, 36

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cristina trivellin/marco caccavo - january 2010