5 - “ My use of the idea of intersubjectivity, prior to the encounter with infancy research, was rooted in Habermas, whose book (Erkenntnis und Interesse [Know- ledge and Human Interests]) was eagerly awaited in Frankfurt in 1968. The book explicated the move that took critical social theory from the Marxian idea of human beings as producers of their world to that of communicators. It was here I heard the term ‘the intersubjectivity of mutual understanding’ for the first time and sat in seminars on socialization, communication theory, and George Herbert Meade.” 12 - “In Bonds of Love (1988) I defended the possibility of sadomasochism as play, rather than as simple domination, against the then prevailing heterosexual feminist discourse. I saw this play as an incarnation of the historically shaped imagining of desire that could be either concrete or symbolic, shutting down or liberating.” 13 - “Resisting the split between identificatory love and object love, reconfiguring the meaning of subjects and objects, is part of resisting normativity and regulation in the name of producing something other. That something might be called overinclusiveness, multiplicity, or queerness, but what matters to me is its preservation of emotional aliveness and recognition in the face of pain and shame.”
- “This idea of doer and done-to became central in my later under- standing of clinical impasses, relationships of perpetrator and victims, as well as symmetrical relations in which each person feels done-to, each person feels in the right, each afraid of being blamed.”
Questions: Is Benjamin stating that “the third” can be equated to a form of queering psychoanalysis? Is play (sadomasochism) a way of mediating the third?