Catherine Malabou

Neuroliterature: this word is not a name for a new discipline, which—like neurolinguistics, neuropsychoanalysis, or neurophilosophy—would tend to explain the way in which our mental acts are rooted in biological neural processes. Even if we have to pay these new sciences the most acute attention to the extent that they are currently re-sketching the inner and outer boundaries of the Humanities, my purpose here is different and wishes to escape all forms of reductionism.Current neurobiology will be present in my discourse, but not as a possible new foundation for literature. Speaking from the continental philosophical point of view, I am interested in the way neurological research helps both radicalizing and...

I borrow the terms of the title question from Quentin Meillassoux’s book After Finitude, which I intend to discuss here, a book that has provoked a genuine thunderstorm in the philosophical sky.1 “The primary condition to the issue I intend to deal with here,” Meillassoux says, “is ‘the relinquishing of transcendentalism’” . The French expression is “l’abandon du transcendantal.”2 I think that “the relinquishing of the transcendental” is better than “the relinquishing of transcendentalism.” As for relinquish, it implies something softer, gentler, than abandon. Abandonment means a definite separation, whereas relinquishing designates a negotiated rupture, a farewell that maintains a relationship with what it ..

The word “grammatology” literally signifies the “science of writing.” One must acknowledge, however, that this science has never existed. Derrida's book Of Grammatology proposes to elaborate and to implement just such a project. Why has this grammatological project never been accomplished? For Derrida, “writing”1 can no longer simply designate a technique for the notation of speech. A distinction should be made, then, between “narrow” and “enlarged” meanings of writing. Indeed, is the extension of the concept of writing the work of writing itself or must one suppose that the “modifiability” of the concept is not of the order of writing? This essay will propose that an original modifiability, not reducible to the single operation of writing, is initiated from the beginning as well. I call this modifiability “plasticity.” “Plasticity of writing” would then be the paradox inherent in the redefinition of writing itself that may explain the “failure” of any “grammatology.”

When it comes to the body, to life, to the issue of being a living body in this world, it is of primary importance to give up what Merleau-Ponty calls “intellectualist psychology” as well as “idealist philosophy,” and to stress the empirical biological dimension of our existential situation. Merleau-Ponty insists on the necessity to take into account the most recent biological and neurobiological discoveries. This double approach constitutes the singularity and uniqueness of the Phenomenology of Perception. My first issue here is to interrogate what currently remains from this approach by confronting it to the neurobiological one. I will situate the confrontation in the specific context of two neural pathologies that cause profound modifications of the body schema. First, phantom pains and phantom limbs, second anosognosia. Merleau-Ponty sees these pathologies as new versions of the Freudian concept of disavowal or psychic refusal. Neurobiologists deprive them of any unconscious dimension. Are we then facing a conflict between meaning and absence of meaning, or does current neurobiology confer a new and unexpected future to Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology?Cet article examine le rapport entre l’ouvrage classique de Merleau-Ponty, Phénoménologie de la perception, et les récentes découvertes de la neurobiologie. Plus précisément, l’étude de Catherine Malabou analyse le nouveau sens du sens chez Merleau-Ponty – qu’elle considère comme plus riche que celui que promeut la neurobiologie. L’auteure affirme néanmoins que le sens du sens chez Merleau-Ponty et celui de la neurobiologie sont plus proches qu’il ne semble. C’est pourquoi elle soutient qu’un dialogue authentique est possible entre la neurobiologie actuelle et les résultats de la Phénoménologie de la perception.Quando si tratta del corpo, della vita, dell’essere un corpo vivo in questo mondo, è fondamentale abbandonare quella che Merleau-Ponty definisce “psicologia intellettualistica” o anche “filosofia idealista”, e mettere in rilievo la dimensione empirica e biologica della nostra situazione esistenziale. Merleau-Ponty insiste sulla necessità di tener conto delle più recenti scoperte biologiche e neurobiologiche. Questo doppio approccio costituisce la singolarità e l’unicità della Fenomenologia della percezione. Il mio primo obiettivo sarà quello di interrogare quanto sopravvive di questo approccio mettendolo a confronto con quello neurobiologico. Svolgerò questo confronto calandolo nel contesto di due patologie neurologiche che causano profonde modificazioni dello schema corporeo. In primo luogo il fenomeno del dolore fantasma e degli arti fantasma, in secondo luogo l’anosognosia. Merleau-Ponty interpreta queste patologie in termini analoghi a quanto Freud chiamava disconoscimento o rifiuto psichico. I neurobiologi le spogliano invece di qualsiasi dimensione inconscia. Ci troviamo allora di fronte a un conflitto tra il significato e l’assenza di significato, o dobbiamo piuttosto concludere che la neurobiologia attuale conferisce alla fenomenologia merleaupontyana un nuovo e inatteso futuro?

Dialectics operates, Derrida writes, ‘in raising or erecting what falls’. Yet the Hegelian system is problematized in the sense that, in the Genet column of Glas, what substitutes for the system is not a well-grounded philosophical alternative, but a sort of disseminal substitution itself, working within as much as against the system it resists. The confrontation staged by the text is not between homosexual transgression, on the one hand, and heterosexual normativity as the origin of the social bond, on the other, but instead a confrontation between two perspectives on the transcendental. The problem of Glas is that the two columns seem to ‘come out the same’ at the very moment when they seem to radically differ or diverge. Put differently, this problem is that of a contagion between the two sides. Why is there a risk of contagion and of similarity? What does this do to the transcendentality in question?

Because he introduces a nonplastic element in his definition of the plasticity of mental life—that is, elasticity—Freud ruins the possibility of thinking what he precisely wishes to think, the plastic coincidence between creation and destruction of form. The characterization of the death drive as “elastic” deprives it of its plastic power and of its capacity to resist the pleasure principle. If we are not able to prove that the destruction of form has and is a form, if form is always on the side of Eros and of pleasure, it becomes impossible to prove that there is anything beyond the pleasure principle.

"John McAfee hat eine Unabhängigkeitserklärung der Währungen (Declaration of Currency Independence) verfasst, in der er proklamiert, dass die Zeit gekommen sei, das Staatsmono- pol der Herstellung von Devisen und der Kontrolle ihrer Flüsse in Frage zu stellen und das Band zwischen Geographie und Währung aufzulösen. Die Philosophin Catherine Malabou erläutert in ihrem Artikel die ökonomischen und philosophischen Hintergründe ihrer Entscheidung, diese Erklärung zu unter- zeichnen. John McAfee has drafted a Declaration of Currency Independence in which he proclaims that the time has come to question the state monopoly on the production and control of foreign exchange and its flows and to break the link between geography and currency. In her article, philosopher Catherine Malabou explains the economic and philosophical background leading to her decision to sign this declaration."

We try to explore here the Derridean concept of "possibility." Such a concept has no contraries. It does not oppose effectivity or necessity, or even impossibility, but stays what it is in any case: possible. Trying to negate it or to contradict it only leads to denial. To Derrida, this strange status of possibility is addressed as the question of faith as such, as it appears in "Faith and Knowledge." Every belief is always, at its foundation, belief in the possibility of a completely different history altogether, in what Derrida calls the "utterly other chance." Is deconstruction the legible form of this otherness?

In Spinoza, God is without a name and without a shape. His essence is the very form of the necessity of nature, the infinite regularity, actuality and rationality of what there is. Nothing good, nothing bad in this. All representations of God as a legislator, a creator or a father, endowed with intentions, are only human projections produced by an inadequate understanding of what a cause is. A true cause is never separated from its effect, but is immanent to it, which means that it remains within it. As cause of himself, that is of nature, God is nothing but his own effectuation, and in that sense, he cannot be said transcendent, that is external, to what he produces. Are the readings of Spinoza that characterize him only as a thinker of “immanence” and/or “self-regulation” totally fair though? Do they do justice to the major issue of the origin of the sacred as developped in the Theological-Political Treatise? Where does sacredness come from for Spinoza? Can it be reduced to a sheer error or illusion, a temporary hole in the tissue of immanence, or does it open a specific space in immanence that remains to be explored? What exactly are the relationships between necessity and faith, between truth and its irreducible symbolic dimension? And what does “symbolic” means there where God is impersonal? Following Spinoza scriptural hermeneutics, and discussing it also with thinkers like Levinas, we will develop a new approach to Spinoza’s concept of revelation, pertaining to his vision of the sacred as an economy of signs without a referent. In doing so, we would like to show that Spinoza’s critique of religious dogmatism or fanatism is not to be confused with the dismissal of the sacred, it is on the contrary propedeutical to the philosophical delineation of sacredness.

Comment la philosophie de Hegel pourrait-elle encore promettre quelque chose puisqu'elle est apparue, aux yeux des lecteurs contemporains, comme une entreprise d'annulation du temps? Le savoir absolu n'est-il pas le resultat du processus dialectique par lequel l'esprit releve toute temporalite et par la toute surprise, l'evenement se produisant toujours trop tard? D'une absence de pensee de l'avenir dans la philosophie de Hegel decoulerait une absence d'avenir de la philosophie hegelienne elle-meme. C'est contre une telle assertion que le present ouvrage s'inscrit en faux; il se propose pour cela de travailler le concept de plasticite, montrant comment il forme en profondeur, a la fois comme sa structure et comme son rythme, le contenu speculatif. Est plastique ce qui est susceptible de recevoir comme de donner la forme, mais aussi de l'aneantir. Hegel degage ce concept de son sol natal, l'art, pour le rendre a sa veritable origine : le developpement de la subjectivite. Est dit plastique, en effet, le rapport que la subjectivite entretient avec l'accident, avec ce qui arrive. L'auto-determination apparait comme proces de temporalisation au sein duquel la subjectivite, dans l'attitude contrastee d'un voir venir, se donne et par la recoit sa propre forme, anticipant son avenir tout en renoncant a en maitriser l'irruption. La plasticite du concept hegelien de temps est le foyer de resistance clandestin ou se prepare la reponse a l'accusation de vulgarite portee par Heidegger a l'encontre de ce meme concept.

A quelles conditions peut-on tenter une mise en perspective critique des pensées de Heidegger et de Levi-Strauss ? Une telle question exige l'examen du concept de « structure » chez les deux auteurs. De la « structure de l'existence » à la « structure du mythe » ou à celle du jeu, quelle différence, quel écart ? Et n'est-ce pas précisément le territoire secret qui sépare la différence et l'écart qu'il faut explorer ? C'est là ce qu'entreprend l'auteur, retrouvant ainsi la question originaire de la déconstruction To what extent is a critical confrontation between Heidegger and Levi-Strauss possible ? Such a question demands examining closely the concept of « structure » in both works. From « structure of existence » to « structure of myth » or of « play », what difference and what gap ? Between difference and gap : such is the secret territory which opens itself here. The author shows that this opening is the very possibility of deconstruction.

In the post-feminist age the fact that 'woman' finds herself deprived of her 'essence' only confirms, paradoxically, a very ancient state of affairs: 'woman' has never been able to define herself in any other way than in terms of the violence done to her. Violence alone confers her being - whether it is domestic and social violence or theoretical violence. The critique of 'essentialism' (i.e. there is no specifically feminine essence) proposed by both gender theory and deconstruction is just one more twist in the ontological negation of the feminine.

Au paragraphe 27 de la Critique de la raison pure, Kant affirme que la présence des catégories dans l'esprit est a priori, terme qu'il faut bien distinguer de l'inné. Innées, les catégories seraient contingentes, implantées en nous par le Créateur, simples dispositions subjectives dont nul ne pourrait prouver la nécessité. C'est là la thèse de Hume. Quelle est toutefois la différence avec l'a priori? Il faut comprendre que ce dernier en quelque sorte s'engendre, se produit, selon, pour ainsi dire, une " épigenèse ", le mouvement graduel et différencié d'un développement embryonnaire. Le livre développe tous les paradoxes contenus dans cette analogie, laquelle sert de fil directeur à la discussion : Kant parvient-il vraiment, grâce à l'épigenèse, à distinguer entre a priori et inné, à contredire le scepticisme et à conférer une valeur fondatrice au transcendantal? Adversaires et défenseurs du kantisme s'affrontent. De Meillassoux au cognitivisme en passant par l'évolutionnisme mental, de Heidegger à Foucault, Kant est sommé de répondre et de prendre position sur trois questions centrales qui sont celles du temps, de la contingence et de la différence entre raison et cerveau.

La création de « puces synaptiques » qui seraient dotées d’une certaine plasticité ouvre-t-elle la voie à une intelligence artificielle vraiment « intelligente », même si de façon différente des êtres humains? Ou la nature des avancées de ce type, d’une plasticité à des années lumières de celle du cerveau humain, nous contraignent-elles à beaucoup plus de scepticisme? Pour la philosophe Catherine Malabou, l’essentiel est de permettre aux deux intelligences, naturelle et artificielle, de s’enrichir l’une l’autre. De ne jamais fermer la voie des possibles, que ce soit par des réflexions philosophiques, des fictions ou des expérimentations.

At the center of Catherine's Malabou's study of Hegel is a defense of Hegel's relation to time and the future. While many readers, following Kojève, have taken Hegel to be announcing the end of history, Malabou finds a more supple impulse, open to the new, the unexpected. She takes as her guiding thread the concept of “plasticity,” and shows how Hegel's dialectic—introducing the sculptor's art into philosophy—is motivated by the desire for transformation. Malabou is a canny and faithful reader, and allows her classic “maître” to speak, if not against his own grain, at least against a tradition too attached to closure and system. Malabou's Hegel is a “plastic” thinker, not a nostalgic metaphysician.

A career-spanning collection of published and unpublished writings from one of today's leading French philosophers 25 essays showcase Malabou's rounded philosophical project: 17 previously published and 8 brand newDemonstrates the interdisciplinary range and expansive applicative scope of her concept of plasticity Presents a full portrait of Malabou's philosophy which shows her project as a coherent conceptual problem rather than a collection of disparate topics and themesIncludes a critical introduction by Malabou expert Ian JamesCatherine Malabou is one of the foremost, most innovative intelligences working in contemporary French philosophy today. Her work articulates a coherent conceptualisation of 'plasticity' by merging recent neurobiology and medicinal sciences with the history of philosophy and political theory.Across the essays gathered in Plasticity: The Promise of Explosion, Malabou carves a philosophical space between structuralism, deconstruction, cognitive psychology, psychoanalysis and speculative realism. By demonstrating the plastic transformability at the heart of these disciplines, a change that always promises future explosion, Malabou, as a female philosopher, also articulates the need to 'change difference' within patriarchal concepts of tradition itself.The collection is divided into four thematic parts, each of which showcases a major aspect of Malabou's conceptualisation of plasticity. In his introduction, Ian James situates Malabou's work within contemporary philosophy and navigates the contours of her unique work.--Back cover.