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Chapter 4 • Nicola Mai
encing social antagonism, war and displacement, these people were suddenly
confronted with the consequences and contradictions embedded
within their homogeneous cognitive world and lacked the cultural resources
necessary to ascribe meaning to the new social and cultural environment.
The experience of the reality they met in the context of displacement was
shaped by the discovery of differences within their own identity (Serbian)
and similarities across different cultures (Serbian and Albanian).
Among the displaced population, education, the experience of distressing
events, age and the context of daily experience (urban vs. rural) were crucial
factors shaping their ability to cope with their suffering. There is, however,
evidence of another such indicator, to be dealt with more specifically
in the next section. In general, people who had direct intense libidinal
relationships with members of different ethnic groups seemed to cope
better with pain and suffering, as they seem to have access to narratives
that account for antagonism and responsibility in more meaningful terms.
Their experience of love and friendship across two ethnically different cultures
enabled them to acknowledge individual similarities beyond and
against the influence of the hegemonic discourses which introduce and
reinforce differences along ethnic lines.
As we have seen, within any culture there are competing modes of
thought, referring to different cognitive frameworks and sustained by different
regimes of individual and collective libidinal economy. In particular,
we have underlined how individual and collective narcissism is consistent
with a homogeneous cognitive framework and a collectivist form of
social organization, whereby meaning is created through the celebration of
the “same” and the rejection of the “other”. The exit from a narcissistic
articulation of libidinal economy brought about by a meaningful libidinal
relation across culturally constructed “sames” and “others” renders hegemonic
explanations of social antagonism along homogeneous lines meaningfully
dissatisfying. Thus, in the name of the (non-narcissistic) libidinally
meaningful liaison with an-other person, the subject both develops alone
and seeks, in the public arena, discourses offering a cognitively meaningful
explanation of events along heterogeneous lines. This passage is full of
implications at the political and social levels. By actively challenging an
ethnicized regime of differences introduced and reinforced by public
normative discourse, the subject can potentially construct a meaningful
explanation only by grasping and emphasizing the relevance of political
differences within his/her own ethnicized identity.
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