Shaul Bar-Haim, 'The Shadow of Narcissism: (Jewish) Self-Hatred in the Age of Identity Politics'

My talk aims to highlight the need to explore the political, historical and psychoanalytical dimensions of 'self-hatred'. In the past ‘self-hatred’ was considered a perversion (for example homosexuality was associated with self-hatred), sociological fact (assimilated Jews were considered as denying their identity in favour of assimilation), and psychological weakness. Currently, ‘self-hatred’ plays a major rhetorical tool for silencing opponents in debates among identity groups such as black people, LGBTQ, and Jewish communities ('how dare you say that? you are a self-hating x!'). However, my intention is to discuss ‘self-hatred’ as a genuine authentic, non-pathologized, and overlooked emotion that can help us understanding a core aspect of identity politics. I’m particularly interested in the denial of ‘self-hatred’ and the reasons for a cultural discouragement to feel and express it among identity groups. 

Jewish self-hatred will serve me as a major case study, that I hope to expand later to other groups in a future work. There is a whole history of the 'self-hatred Jew' (similar but not equal to self-anti-Semite) which I'm going to present briefly – a concept which turned from a pathology in the 19th century, to a psychological and sociological concept in the mid-20th century, into a rhetorical accusation in debates mainly over Zionism. However, I argue, 'self-hatred' is functioning in discourses of identity groups such as the so-called ‘diaspora Jews’ as a sort of a 'shadow emotion' of narcissism, that is a degraded illegitimate emotion to express in public (for example, non-Zionists Jews are in constant attempt to deny any self-hatred by performing ‘loving to the world’ as Jews, which I will trace back to Hannah Arendt). 

The neoliberal consumerist injunction is to 'love yourself' and any less than that is widely considered to be an 'internalization' of an oppression. That brings me to my other aim in this talk which is to question and challenge the idea of ‘internalization’ as a form of shuttering down any serious discussion of the possibility ‘not-loving-yourself’ (that is the idea that ‘you hate yourself because you internalize the thinking and feelings of your oppressor’, which hardly help to understand what it feels not to love oneself). 

My goal then will be to understand how self-hatred became a cultural taboo; and also, to ask some questions about the inflation, I believe, in the idea of 'internalization' in identity discourses, and in the social sciences more generally, in a way that excludes the possibility of some emotions to be manifested publicly.