Catherine Malabou

Counterpath is a collaborative work by Catherine Malabou and Jacques Derrida that answers to the gamble inherent in the idea of “travelling with” the philosopher of deconstruction. Malabou's readerly text of quotations and commentary demonstrates how Derrida's work, while appearing to be anything but a travelogue, is nevertheless replete with references to geographical and topographical locations, and functions as a kind of counter-Odyssey through meaning, theorizing, and thematizing notions of arrival, drifting, derivation, and catastrophe. In fact, by going straight to the heart of the Derridean idea of “spacing,” she finally makes it seem as though Derrida has never written about anything but travel. Malabou's text is punctuated by a series of postcards received by Derrida from destinations such as Istanbul and Porto, Laguna Beach and Athens, which are inspired by his reading of her evolving discussion. Writing in a familiar and unguarded manner, as if he were “on vacation” from his own writing, Derrida still remains totally faithful to that work and invites the reader to reflect on much of what haunts his texts as well as his daily life, questions of distance and death, the relation to the other, and exile.

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?

: How is it possible to account for the double dimension of the “anthropos” of the Anthropocene? At once both a responsible, historical subject, and a neutral, non-conscious and non-reflexive force? According to Chakrabarty, the “anthropos” has to be considered a geological force; according to Smail, it has to be considered an addicted brain. A subjectivity without being for the former, an emotional and dependent biological and symbolic entity for the latter. As an in between solution, I propose a rereading of the concept of “mentality” proposed by Braudel and his followers from the Annales School. The mental would be intermediarily located between the inorganic and the neural, thus helping to fill the gap between two opposed concepts of history, that are both implied in the current redefinition of ecology.

This book is one of the most important recent books on Hegel, a philosopher who has had a crucial impact on the shape of continental philosophy. Published here in English for the first time, it includes a substantial preface by Jacques Derrida in which he explores the themes and conclusions of Malabou's book. _The Future of Hegel: Plasticity, Temporality and Dialectic_ restores Hegel's rich and complex concepts of time and temporality to contemporary philosophy. It examines his concept of time, relating it to perennial topics in philosophy such as substance, accident and the identity of the subject. Catherine Malabou's also contrasts her account of Hegelian temporality with the interpretation given by Heidegger in _Being and Time_, arguing that it is the concept of 'plasticity' that best describes Hegel's theory of temporality. The future is understood not simply as a moment in time, but as something malleable and constantly open to change through our interpretation. The book also develops Hegel's preoccupation with the history of Greek thought and Christianity and explores the role of theology in his thought. Essential reading for those interested in Hegel and contemporary continental philosophy, _The Future of Hegel _is also fascinating to those interested in the ideas of Heidegger and Derrida

Adrian Johnston and Catherine Malabou defy theoretical humanities' deeply-entrenched resistance to engagements with the life sciences. Rather than treat biology and its branches as hopelessly reductive and politically suspect, they view recent advances in neurobiology and its adjacent scientific fields as providing crucial catalysts to a radical rethinking of subjectivity. Merging three distinct disciplines--European philosophy from Descartes to the present, Freudian-Lacanian psychoanalysis, and affective neuroscience-- Johnston and Malabou triangulate the emotional life of affective subjects as conceptualized in philosophy and psychoanalysis with neuroscience. Their experiments yield different outcomes. Johnston finds psychoanalysis and neurobiology have the potential to enrich each other, though affective neuroscience demands a reconsideration of whether affects can be unconscious. Investigating this vexed issue has profound implications for theoretical and practical analysis, as well as philosophical understandings of the emotions. Malabou believes scientific explorations of the brain seriously problematize established notions of affective subjectivity in Continental philosophy and Freudian-Lacanian analysis. She confronts philosophy and psychoanalysis with something neither field has seriously considered: the concept of wonder and the cold, disturbing visage of those who have been affected by disease or injury, such that they are no longer affected emotionally. At stake in this exchange are some of philosophy's most important claims concerning the relationship between the subjective mind and the objective body, the structures and dynamics of the unconscious dimensions of mental life, the role emotion plays in making us human, and the functional differences between philosophy and science.

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?

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.”

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.

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.

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...

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.