Catherine Malabou

This article confronts two ideas of “outside”, that is, two concepts of the outside, as well as two different philosophies and two different concepts of philosophy. Both start from the same problem, namely the fact that “the outside” can only become a philosophical question if it points to a possible outside of philosophy itself. The first concept of "outside" examined comes from Western philosophy and points to a new space of thought that can no longer be called philosophy and which manifests itself, for example, in certain positions of Foucault or Derrida. The second, taken from Latin American thinkers and writers, such as Dussel's figure of the philosophers of the periphery, appears as outside the Western philosophical attempt to produce its own exterior. If some move towards the anonymity of writing, others look to poetry for their own way of telling the world. Are there passages between these two ways of thinking that are knowingly conceived as “outside” philosophy?

What if we took the phrase la démocratie à venir at its word? In other words, what if we understood ‘democracy to come’ as the abrupt arrival of the people, as the instant in which a crowd floods in with overwhelming force? Reading Jacques Derrida alongside Elias Canetti's Crowds and Power, ‘The Crowd’ answers these questions by considering Derrida's ‘democracy to come’ in terms of political figuration rather than representation. Through the tropes of touch, masking and flight, this paper explores the play of distances that occurs between members in the crowd and in turn suggests an inextricable link between democratic thought, on the one hand, and, on the other, the metamorphoses that the crowd precipitates. Between fluidity and paralysis, individual and collective, this paper grapples with a surprising aporia—that democracy is the aristocratic secret of the crowd. ‘The Crowd’ was originally presented as ‘La Foule’ at the 2002 Cerisy Conference, La démocratie à venir (Autour de Jacques Derrida), which explored the political significance of Derrida's work.

In her new book, Catherine Malabou argues that the French Revolution existed in name only, not in reality – privileges disappeared only on the surface and the old forms of domination persisted in structuring everyday life. And, sure enough, French citizens soon came to ask: "How is it that we are falling back into the same patterns of privilege and servitude?" In developing this argument, Malabou echoes the conclusion drawn by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, whose work, _What is Property?_, written in 1840, claimed that there was no revolution. Proudhon witnessed how, in the aftermath of the French Revolution, feudal relations persisted and monarchy was restored. He connected the persistence of feudalism and servitude to his critique of property. For Proudhon, property is but another name for domination: "Property is theft," he famously declared; by which he meant that private property starts with a theft of memory and meaning that transforms continuous bondage into a promise of emancipation. This marks the specificity of the anarchist critique of property, and it led Proudhon to conclude "I am an anarchist." Malabou connects her re-reading of Proudhon's masterpiece with our own political situation today, more than two hundred years after the French Revolution. She examines how the enduring domination that is central to private property infiltrates various aspects of the modern world, from the legacies of colonialism and slavery to work and politics. This timely re-assessment of the relation between property and domination will be of interest to students of philosophy and politics, and to anyone concerned with today's key political questions.

_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..

The clitoris was absent in anatomy books, in paintings and sculptures, absent in spirit and even body; it has long been the organ of erased pleasure. We assume that this oversight has been repaired in our times: today, the clitoris is not forgotten but honoured. Conferences, books, manifestos, works of art are all devoted to it. The autonomy of clitoral jouissance is recognized. The boundaries of feminism have also moved: queer, intersex and trans approaches claim that the clitoris is perhaps no longer the exclusive preserve of the woman. And yet, there remains a wounded space. Because genital mutilation is still common practice. Because millions of women are still denied pleasure. The clitoris continues to mark the enigmatic space of the feminine. Constrained by the extreme difficulty and the extreme urgency of returning to this scorched earth, it is time to give voice to an organ of pleasure which has still not become an organ of thought.

Many contemporary philosophers – including Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and Giorgio Agamben – ascribe an ethical or political value to anarchy, but none ever called themselves an “anarchist.” It is as if anarchism were unmentionable and had to be concealed, even though its critique of domination and of government is poached by the philosophers. _Stop Thief!_ calls out the plundering of anarchism by philosophy. It’s a call that is all the more resonant today as the planetary demand for an alternative political realm raises a deafening cry. It also alerts us to a new philosophical awakening. Catherine Malabou proposes to answer the cry by re-elaborating a concept of anarchy articulated around a notion of the “non-governable” far beyond an inciting of disobedience or common critiques of capitalism. Anarchism is the only way out, the only pathway that allows us to question the legitimacy of political domination and thereby wfree up the confidence that we need if we are to survive.

Em uma entrevista de 1977, Michel Foucault argumenta que é necessário criar uma filosofia política desvinculada do conceito de soberania, já que “cortar a cabeça do rei” é impossível na teoria política. Democracias ocidentais ainda estão conectadas a esse modelo político e jurídico. Não há soberania sem um soberano. Surge, assim, a necessidade de desconstruir a soberania na filosofia contemporânea. Catherine Malabou afirma que filósofos como Foucault, Derrida e Agamben fracassaram nesse objetivo, pois ao tentar definir o que resiste à soberania, acabam permitindo sua continuidade. Malabou volta-se justamente na biopolítica, conceito introduzido por Foucault e reformulado por Agamben e Derrida, caracterizado como um poder centrado no controle da vida. Para desconstruir a biopolítica, é necessário um ponto de intersecção entre biologia e história, no qual se encontrem o sujeito político e ser vivo. No entanto, para Foucault, Agamben e Derrida, a biologia está sempre ligada à soberania, apresentada como ciência que transgride seus limites para controlar a vida. O argumento de Malabou aponta para o fato de que qualquer resistência biológica ao biopoder é impossível, pois a determinação biológica da vida deve ser transgredida. Ela propõe a existência de dois conceitos de vida: a vida biológica e a vida simbólica, com a última revelando o potencial de resistência. Para a autora, novas categorias biológicas, como a epigenética, podem ajudar a encontrar um novo materialismo. A epigenética, segundo ela, resiste à redução política da biologia a mero veículo de poder, revelando a intrincada relação entre o biológico e o simbólico, sem transgressão do biológico. A plasticidade dialética da diferença, em vez da indiferença simbólica, seria a forma mais eficiente de desconstruir a soberania, destacando o alcance revolucionário dos mecanismos biológicos, especialmente a epigênese.

O texto visa explicar uma impossibilidade, um impensável, presente na filosofia contemporânea marcada pela preeminência não crítica da vida simbólica sobre a biológica. Propõe-se uma teoria que transcende a biopolítica e o biopoder, eliminando a oposição entre o biológico e o simbólico. A intenção é desenvolver um conceito de resistência biológica que não seja indiferente à resistência política. O título sugere uma cumplicidade, na forma de alternância, entre ambos, com um objetivo claro: uma conjunção dialética e complexa que nos ajude a compreender o papel da biologia na resistência política e vice-versa. Essa abordagem exige repensar a biologia de maneira que transgrida a normalização e instrumentalização típicas da biopolítica. Não se trata apenas de um problema de discurso disciplinar ou práticas das ciências da vida, mas de uma distinção que as ciências humanas mantiveram entre vida simbólica e biológica, que hoje se mostra insustentável. O texto defende que a biologia contém uma resistência simbólica inerente, onde a vida resiste ao seu polimorfismo e fixação. Entender que o simbólico representa os diversos jogos que a vida joga consigo mesma, sem se fragmentar, permite reconhecer o potencial revolucionário da clonagem, suas técnicas e mecanismos epigenéticos. A epigenética, em especial, resiste à redução política da biologia a um mero veículo de poder. Reduzir esses novos campos à normalização biopolítica nos faz perder uma nova perspectiva: um intercâmbio evolutivo dentro da vida, expondo-a a riscos e novas possibilidades. Assim, o texto afirma que a vida biológica cria sua própria simbolização, sem depender de uma economia simbólica transcendental. Ele argumenta que a resistência simbólica está enraizada na biologia, resistindo ao polimorfismo e à fixação, e que a epigenética revela a complexa relação entre o biológico e o simbólico. Limitar esses campos à normalização biopolítica obscurece a compreensão da vida como um processo contínuo de troca e transformação, repleto de novas possibilidades e riscos.

This article, originally delivered as a lecture at the University of Chicago, is a critical reading of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. Following Antonio Gramsci, their book reverses the meaning of the term hegemony. The traditional use of the term (for military or political leadership) shifts and gives birth to a new signification. Hegemony currently designates a privilege but a discursive one only. It is the privilege conferred to a certain word or category serving as a unifying symbol for different and even heterogeneous forms of political resistance. Hegemony thus understood retains an idea of direction but without any dominating intention. It just orients multiple revolt movements without reducing their differences. Such a unifying symbol appears as a specific signifier devoid of any content or reference, thus ready to bear any contextual meaning. Does this new understanding of hegemony succeed in providing a nondogmatic and nonbinding process of unification, or does it secretely reinstall the logic of commandment?

What is the influence of music on the brain? And in what cases can this influence cause dysfunctioning? Among the different examples analyzed by Oliver Sacks, one is particularly significant: the phenomenon of synesthesia. Synesthesia is connected to having an extra one that associates different kinds of sensory information, music, and color. It can sometimes transform hearing music as a painful experience, transforming it into a pure literal meaning – to feel together – the secret condition for all sensations? This hypothesis is examined by the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty. After all, Wagner was subject to synesthetic syndromes.

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.