272 - “One of the distinctive contributions of her theory is to insist that intersubjectivity is not the same as object relations, that intersubjectivity adds to object relations the idea of an external Other, one who exceeds the psychic construction of the object in complementary terms. This means that whatever the psychic and fantasmatic relation to the object may be, it ought to be understood in terms of the larger dynamic of recognition. The relation to the object is not the same as the relation to the Other, but the relation to the Other provides a framework for understanding the relation to the object.” 274 - “My understanding of her project here is that, whereas the tension between omnipotence and contact, as she puts it, is necessary in psychic life, there are ways of living and handling that tension that do not involve ‘splitting’ but that keep the tension both alive and productive.”
- “In what follows, I hope to lay out what I take to be some of the consequences of this view and its component parts. For if it is the case that destructiveness can turn into recognition, then it follows that recognition can leave destructiveness behind.”
288 - “Although Benjamin sometimes refers to postmodern conceptions of the self, which presume its ‘split’ and ‘decentered’ character, we do not come to know what precisely is meant by these terms. I suggest that it will not do to say that there is first a self, which then engages in splitting; the self as I am outlining it here is beyond itself from the start and is defined by this ontological ek-stasis, this fundamental relation to the Other in which it finds itself ambiguously installed outside itself. “ 289 - “Again, displacing the binary model for thinking about relationality will also help us appreciate the triangulating echoes in heterosexual, homosexual, and bisexual desire, and complicate our understanding of the relation between sexuality and gender.” Questions: Why does the binary have such a valuable currency in psychoanalytic theories? And historically with philosophical and critical theorization? What can thinking beyond the binary do for psychoanalysis?