The Bonds of Love Quotes

“In the most common fantasy of ideal love, [...], a woman can only unleash her desire in the hands of a man whom she imagines to be more powerful, who does not depend upon her for his strength. [...] The boundedness and limits within which one can surrender, and in which one can experience abandonment and creativity, are sought in the ideal lover. (p. 120)”
― Jessica Benjamin, The Bonds of Love: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and the Problem of Domination

“domination originates in a transformation of the relationship between self and other. Briefly stated, domination and submission result from a breakdown of the necessary tension between self-assertion and mutual recognition that allows self and other to meet as sovereign equals.”
― Jessica Benjamin, The Bonds of Love: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and the Problem of Domination

“Domination, I have argued, is a twisting of the bonds of love. Domination does not repress the desire for recognition; rather, it enlists and transforms it. Beginning in the breakdown of the tension between self and other, domination proceeds through the alternate paths of identifying with or submitting to powerful others who personify the fantasy of omnipotence. For the person who takes this route to establishing his own power, there is an absence where the other should be. This void is filled with fantasy material in which the other appears so dangerous or so weak - or both - that he threatens the self and must be controlled. A vicious cycle begins: the more the other is subjugated, the less he is experienced as a human subject and the more distance or violence the self must deploy against him.”
― Jessica Benjamin, The Bonds of Love: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and the Problem of Domination

“From now on the subject says: “Hullo object!” “I destroyed you.”
― Jessica Benjamin, The Bonds of Love: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and the Problem of Domination

“Destruction, in other words, is an effort to differentiate. In childhood, if things go well, destruction results simply in survival;”
― Jessica Benjamin, The Bonds of Love: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and the Problem of Domination

“Assertion and recognition constitute the poles of a delicate balance. This balance is integral to what is called “differentiation”: the individual’s development as a self that is aware of its distinctness from others. Yet this balance, and with it the differentiation of self and other, is difficult to sustain.2 In particular, the need for recognition gives rise to a paradox. Recognition is that response from the other which makes meaningful the feelings, intentions, and actions of the self. It allows the self to realize its agency and authorship in a tangible way. But such recognition can only come from an other whom we, in turn, recognize as a person in his or her own right. This struggle to be recognized by an other, and thus confirm our selves, was shown by Hegel to form the core of relationships of domination.”
― Jessica Benjamin, The Bonds of Love: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and the Problem of Domination

“As we have repeatedly seen, domination ultimately deprives both subjugator and subjugated of recognition. Gender polarity deprives women of their subjectivity and men of an other to recognize them. But the loss of recognition between men and women as equal subjects is only one consequence of gender domination. The ascendancy of male rationality results finally in the loss and distortion of recognition in society as a whole. It not only eliminates the maternal aspects of recognition (nurturance and empathy) from our collective values, actions, and institutions. It also restricts the exercise of assertion, making social authorship, and agency a matter of performance, control and impersonality - and thus vitiates subjectivity itself. In creating an increasingly objectified world, it deprives us of the intersubjective context in which assertion receives a recognizing response. We must face the enormity of this loss if we are ever to find our way back through the maze of domination to the heart of recognition.”
― Jessica Benjamin, The Bonds of Love: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and the Problem of Domination