An Infused Dialogue, Part 2: The Power of Love Without Objectivity

Abstract

ABSTRACT Building on our account in “An Infused Dialogue, Part 1: Borders, Fusions, Influence,” our aim is to develop a poetics of nonobjectifying love. We begin with a series of concerns: Is objectification an inevitable consequence of erotic desire? Indeed, can loving without objectification happen with intense erotic desire? How could an erotic exchange not objectify the desired one? Even if that kind of loving does happen, how could we speak of it? At the core of a poetics of nonobjectifying is the “middle voice,” a term that we will develop in detail. The middle voice allows discursive articulation for a dimension of life to which we attend. We develop the meaning of the in-between in terms of the middle voice and how border crossings—we might say fusings or imporings—can occur without an active subject of a passive object. Our hope is to cultivate an embodied mindfulness, an attunement to the in-between as a resource for undergoing the corporeal significance of an ontology of relationality that provides options for appreciating nonobjectifying erotic love.