Narcissist’s Seductive Hyperreality: Feminine Sign-value of False Self (Baudrillard)

Macluhan, Debord, Baudrillard: In post-modern society, objects are symbols, signals. They possess a sign-value (meaning, especially regarding status and hierarchy), not a utility.

We simulate an identity (Ego ideal, impression management) by compiling objects (consumerism): who you are becomes who you want to be perceived as.

The need to be seen is translocated (semiotic seeing by decoding collections of objects, “reading” them).

Consequently, as identity is replaced by simulation and signaling, people are reproduced as simulacra (Benjamin’s mechanical reproduction), they become overt texts with no underlying hidden texts (no True Self), clones or copies of each other.

Where Baudrillard got it wrong (even with his fourth simulation): it is not reality that is being simulated – but the simulation.

“The individual self is reduced to the condition of being a mere switching center for all the networks of influence that technology is able to generate”.

When simulation feels more real than reality itself, this is hyperrealism or hyperreality: “a strange, dreamlike realm, where reality has become confused with its own simulation” (the medium is the message).

One defense against this process is narcissism. A child that is not seen or a child that is objectified might choose to objectify and see themselves (usurp the observer or, per Anna Freud, identify with the aggressor).

False Self has sign-value in hyperreality intended to impart uniqueness (usually communicated via the True Self).

But the narcissist does not own the False Self. The False Self is not an object! The narcissist is the False Self.

But only objects or products have sign-value. So: the narcissist is an object.

Narcissists and psychopaths perceive the “system” as masculine: “authoritarian, eccentric, paradoxical, paranoid, and tiresome.”

Psychopaths mostly confront and challenge authority head on (antagonistic and dissocial or antisocial contumaciousness).

Narcissists and the superficially charming psychopath react with “feminine irony” (uncertainty and unpredictability, hysteria).

They “undermine the power and authority of systems through the process of seduction, a feminine trait which neither confronts nor directly challenges authority but instead beguiles it into submission.

Dali’s dream of Hitler. Trump’s stereotypically feminine histrionics.

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