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journal of speculative philosophy, vol. 30, no. 1 , 2016
Copyright © 2016 The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA
An Infused Dialogue, Part 2:
The Power of Love Without Objectivity
Charles Scott and Nancy Tuana
the pennsylvania state university
and vanderbilt university
the pennsylvania state university
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 corpo-
real significance of an ontology of relationality that provides options for appreciating
nonobjectifying erotic love.
keywords: erotic love, objectification, middle voice, imporing, in-between, attunement
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