Recognition of Difference in the Author–Discussant Relation: Reply to Commentary

having come to appreciate the analytic possibilities of first thoughts, what first came to mind when presented with Benjamin's theoretical distinction between “personhood or subjectivity” as opposed to “subjecthood” will be shared. These terms do double duty for Benjamin. Not only do they serve as shorthand to distinguish “between the patient's recognizing the analyst's subjectivity (personhood) and recognizing the analyst's independent existence as outside and different from the patient's mental fantasy (subjecthood)” (Benjamin), but their very duality harbors an implicit hierarchization. “Subjecthood” is to “personhood” as male is to female—some things always end up on top! We have apparently joined the ranks of those expressive personhood types—or perhaps those practical types with a “technical focus”—rather than appreciate the “structural aspects of the intersubjective dialectic” inherent in true subjecthood. Is this yet another effort to reinscribe a dualistic rendering of the “what” and the “that” of the matter?

What first came to to mind when confronted with this distinction was a paradox from Wittgenstein (1958) about the nature of representation. Conjure any image: Is it intended as a representation of something that is or was or of something yet to be? Conjure a picture of world peace: Is it a nostalgic vision of a bygone world or an apocalyptic vision of the future? Similarly, in Austin's (1962) celebrated discussion of speech acts as representational media, he singles out the “performative” as a type of speech, the very utterance of which makes something so. The proverbial example, “I hereby pronounce you husband and wife,” is used not to represent a preexisting state of affairs—in contrast to “The cat is on the mat,” which is—but to actually bring about marital union. Since Austin, of course, the distinction has broken down, as all language use is recognized as having both a performative and a