De Copia: On Narcissism, Echo, and the Im-Possible Female Friendship

There are two interrelated questions that I would like to explore in the context of Pleshette DeArmitt’s work. The first one pertains to the intellectual stakes in the eloquent style of her writing, its elegance and playfulness, which accompanies the philosophical order of argumentation. And the second one refers to the issue of female friendship. How can one discuss such friendship without resorting to merely biographical, historical, or autobiographical terms? Yet what kind of philosophical theories of female friendship could I possibly refer to? Perhaps to none. DeArmitt, whose life has created so many friendships, did not live long enough to write about friendship, at least not directly. And yet I would like to suggest that her captivating—the adjective that I use here deliberately—book, The Right to Narcissism: A Case for Im-possible Self-Love, leaves us traces of female friendship in her philosophical argument that narcissistic self-love is inseparable from the love of another.