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own politics of perturbation of the uncanny. Beyond the theory, this has
meant the politicized mobilization and revitalization of narratives of ethnic
belonging, moral superiority and victimization, which were instrumental
in re-actualizing and re-activating repressed fantasies of omnipotence and
anxieties of extermination and competition, thus triggering narcissistic
rage. According to Michael Ignatieff:
Viewing nationalism as a kind of narcissism reveals the projective and
self-regarding quality of the nationalistic discourse. The particular property
of the narcissist gaze is that it glances up at the Other just to confirm
its difference. Then it looks down again and turns its gaze upon itself. It
does not engage with the Other in any real sense. Narcissist anxiety
expresses itself chiefly in passive self-absorption. A narcissist is uninterested
in others except to the extent that they reflect back upon himself.
What is different is rejected if it fails to confirm the narcissist in his
self-opinion (Ignatieff, 1997: 52, emphasis mine).
These dynamics have very important implications as far as the issue of
personal and collective responsibility is framed within any culture and
society. Moreover, this is a key issue in the narratives used by Serbian
IDPs to construct a morally and psychologically sustainable meaning out
of the complex events they have experienced, and thus calls for deeper
analysis. In fact, when an adult regresses to a stage of primary narcissism,
he withdraws his libidinal impulsions from the outside world and focuses
on his/her needs and fears. It is interesting to underline how both of the
main pathological implications of this regression, megalomania and paranoia,
are consistent with the subject’s withdrawal from reality. Withdrawal
from reality implies a difficulty for the subject to cope with responsibility,
which is then projected outside the narcissistic subject’s world of moral
perfection and the corresponding collectivist identity re-producing the
subject along these lines. Subjects can therefore construct narratives of
paranoia and conspiracy in order to liberate themselves from the burden of
responsibility, doing so in their inability to confront the contradictory and
ambivalent nature of reality, as this is experienced primarily through the
fantasies and projections of his/her idealized Ego. In the remainder of the
paper, some of these dynamics will be illustrated as they appear in the narratives
used by Kosovar Serbian IDPs living in Serbia to create a psychologically
and socially meaningful experience of antagonism, war and
displacement.
Analysis of the interviews
Psychosocial Notebook, Volume 2, October 2001
In order to better analyse and describe the narratives of Serb IDPs from
Kosovo, I have attempted to follow the interview framework according to
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