The negotiation of these poles

1. Does "the negotiation of these poles" mean "the interaction between these poles"?

2. Does "it" refer to "the psyche"?

Text:

Rather, in the field of aesthetic practices the psychic turning back of the sadistic drive onto the self which splits the self into both subject and object in an unpleasurable pleasurable self-shattering creates both self and other as inherently fragmented, yet able to tolerate that fragmentation. Julia Kristeva puts it,

This process could be summarized as an interiorization of the founding separation of the sociosymbolic contract, as an introduction of its cutting edge into the very interior of every identity whether subjective, sexual, ideological or so forth. This in such a way that the habitual and increasingly explicit attempt to fabricate a scapegoat victim as foundress of a society or counter-society may be replaced by the analysis of the potentialities of victim/executioner which characterize each identity, each subject, each sex (italics in original).

Kristeva sees aesthetic practices as crucial to the negotiation of these poles of subjective experience. As we have seen in this book, artworks can create situations in which dualities are productively held in tension without being resolved. This is pleasurable for the psyche because it resonates with the unconscious drives, which do not categorise or judge in the way we do in conscious life.