Catherine Malabou

Catherine Malabou (French: [malabu]; born 1959) is

Catherine Malabou
a French philosopher. She is a Professor in the Philosophy
Department at the Centre for Research in Modern European
Born 1959
Philosophy (CRMEP) at Kingston University, at the European
France
Graduate School, and in the department of Comparative Nationality French
Literature at the University of California Irvine, a position
Era Contemporary philosophy
formerly held by Jacques Derrida.
Region Western philosophy
School Continental philosophy
Contents Notable Combining philosophy
Education ideas (transsubjectivation) and
Work neuroscience (neuroplasticity)
Bibliography Influences
Books
Articles (selection)
Secondary literature
References
External links

Education
Malabou graduated from the École Normale Supérieure Lettres et Sciences Humaines (Fontenay-Saint-Cloud).
Her agrégation and doctorate were obtained, under the supervision of Jacques Derrida, from the École des hautes
études en sciences sociales. Her dissertation became the book, L'Avenir de Hegel: Plasticité, Temporalité,
Dialectique(1996).

Work
Central to Malabou's philosophy is the concept of "plasticity," which she derives in part from the work of Georg
Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and from medical science, for example, from work on stem cells and from the concept
of neuroplasticity. In 1999, Malabou published Voyager avec Jacques Derrida – La Contre-allée, co-authored with
Derrida. Her book, Les nouveaux blessés (2007), concerns the intersection between neuroscience, psychoanalysis, and
philosophy, thought through the phenomenon of trauma.

Coinciding with her exploration of neuroscience has been an increasing commitment to political philosophy. This is
first evident in her book What Should We Do With Our Brain?and continues in Les nouveaux blessés, as well as in her
book on feminism (Changer de différence, le féminin et la question philosophique, Galilée, 2009), and in her
forthcoming book about the homeless and social emergency (La grande exclusion, Bayard).

Malabou is co-writing a book with Adrian Johnston on affects in Descartes, Spinoza and neuroscience, and is preparing
a new book on the political meaning of life in the light of the most recent biological discoveries (mainly epigenetics).
The latter work will discuss Giorgio Agamben's concept of "bare life" and Michel Foucault's notion of biopower,
underscoring the lack of scientific biological definitions of these terms, and the political meaning of such a lack.

Bibliography
Books
Avant demain. Épigenèse et rationalité (Paris: P.U.F., 2014)

(English translation) Before Tomorrow: Epigenesis and Rationality (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2016, trans.
Carolyn Shread) ISBN 978-0-7456-9150-3.
Self and Emotional Life: Merging Philosophy, Psychoanalysis, and Neuroscience (with Adrian Johnston; New York:
Columbia University Press, 2013).
Sois mon corps, with Judith Butler (Paris: Bayard, 2010).

(English translation) You Be My Body For Me, For, Corporeity, Plasticity in Hegel's Phenomenology of
Spirit (London: Blackwell, forthcoming).
La Grande Exclusion, l'urgence sociale, thérapie et symptômes (Paris: Bayard: 2009).
Changer de différence, le féminin et la question philosophique, (Paris: Galilée 2009).

(English translation) Changing Difference, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2011, trans. Carolyn Shread).
La Chambre du milieu, de Hegel aux neurosciences, collected, (Paris: Hermann 2009).
Ontologie de l'accident: Essai sur la plasticité destructrice (Paris: Éditions Léo Scheer, 2009).

(English translation) The Ontology of the Accident: An Essay on Destructive Plasticity (Cambridge: Polity
Press, forthcoming).
Les Nouveaux Blessés: de Freud a la neurologie: penser les traumatismes contemporains (Paris: Bayard, 2007).

(English translation) The New Wounded: From Neurosis to Brain Damage (New York: Fordham University
Press, 2012).
La Plasticité au soir de l'écriture (Paris: Éditions Léo Scheer, 2004).

(English translation) Plasticity at the Dusk of Writing: Dialectic, Destruction, Deconstruction (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2009, trans. Carolyn Shread).
Que faire de notre cerveau? (Paris: Bayard, 2004).

(English translation) What Should We Do With Our Brain? (New York: Fordham University Press, 2009, trans.
Sebastian Rand).
Le Change Heidegger, du fantastique en philosophie (Paris: Éditions Léo Scheer, 2004).

(English translation) The Heidegger Change: On the Fantastic in Philosophy (New York: SUNY Press, 2012).
Plasticité (Paris: Éditions Léo Scheer, 1999).
Voyager avec Jacques Derrida – La Contre-allée, with Jacques Derrida (Paris: La Quinzaine littéraire-Louis
Vuitton, 1999).

(English translation) Counterpath: Traveling with Jacques Derrida (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004,
trans. David Wills).
L'Avenir de Hegel: Plasticité, Temporalité, Dialectique (Paris: Vrin, 1996).

(English translation) The Future of Hegel: Plasticity, Temporality, and Dialectic (New York: Routledge, 2004,
trans. Lisabeth During).

Articles (selection)
"The Brain of History, or, The Mentality of the Anthropocene," South Atlantic Quarterly 116:1 (2017): 39-53.
"Post-Trauma: Towards a New Definition?" , in Tom Cohen (ed.), Telemorphosis: Theory in the Era of Climate
Change, Volume 1 (Ann Arbor: Open Humanities Press, 2012), pp. 226–38.
"Plasticity and Elasticity in Freud's 'Beyond the Pleasure Principle'," parallax 15:2 (2009): 41–52.
"A Conversation with Catherine Malabou" , Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory 9 (2008): 1–13.
"The End of Writing? Grammatology and Plasticity," The European Legacy: Toward New Paradigms 12 (2007):
431–441.
"An Eye at the Edge of Discourse," Communication Theory 17 (2007): 16–25.
"Another Possibility," Research in Phenomenology 36 (2006): 115–129.
"The Form of an 'I'," in John D. Caputo & Michael J. Scanlon (eds.), Augustine and Postmodernism: Confessions
and Circumfession (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005): 127–137.
"History and the Process of Mourning in Hegel and Freud," Radical Philosophy 106 (2001): 15–20.
"Plastic Readings of Hegel," Bulletin of the Hegel Society of Great Britain 41-42 (2000): 132–141.
 "The Future of Hegel: Plasticity, Temporality, Dialectic," Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy 15 (2000): 196-
220.
"Who's Afraid of Hegelian Wolves?," in Paul Patton (ed.), Deleuze: A Critical Reader (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996):
114–138.

Secondary literature
Peter Szendy, ″L'économie de la plasticité″, in Po&sie, No. 155, 2016, 136-145.
Gabriel Schenker, Organic Texture: A Dialogue between Deleuze and Guattari, the Life Sciences, and Catherine
Malabou, New York : Atropos Press, 2014.
Tyler Williams, "Plasticity, in Retrospect: Changing the Future of the Humanities." Diacritics vol. 41, 1, September
2013, 6-25.
Ruth Leys, Review of "What Should we Do with Our Brains," nonsite.org 2 (Spring 2011)
Justin Clemens, The Age of Plastic; or, Catherine Malabou on the Hegelian Futures Market, Cosmos and History:
The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy, Vol 6, No 1, 2010, 153-162.[1]
Frédéric Worms, Ce qui est atteint dans le cerveau (Catherine Malabou, Les nouveaux Blessés), Esprit, Paris,
February 2009, 204-208.
Slavoj Žižek, Quando una vittima sopravvive alla propria morte (on Catherine Malabou Les nouveaux Blessés), Il
Manifesto, Roma, January 2008, 12.

Descartes and the Post-Traumatic Subject, on Catherine Malabou's Les nouveaux Blessés and Other Autistic
Monsters, Qui parle, Berkeley, vol. 17, 2, Spring/Summer 2009, 123-147.
Jean-Paul Martinon, On Futurity, Malabou, Nancy and Derrida, New York : Palgrave and Macmillan, 2007.
Elie During, Politiques du cerveau, (on Catherine Malabou Que faire de notre cerveau ?), Art Press, 302, June
2004, 12-20.
Servanne Jolivet, Heidegger d'un change à l'autre : Catherine Malabou, Didier Franck, François Raffoul, Revue
philosophique de la France et de l'étranger, Paris : PUF, 4, October/December 2004, 455-468.
Jean-Philippe Milet, Heidegger en anamorphose , (on Catherine Malabou, Le Change Heidegger. Du fantastique
en philosophie), Critique, Paris : Editions de Minuit, 2004, 691, 93-107.
Karin de Boer, Thinking in the Light of Time. Heidegger's Encounter with Hegel, Catherine Malabou, The Future of
Hegel, Hegel Studien, Bochum, 2004, Volume 49/50, 80-94.
Mark Alizart, Plasticiens, arts plastiques, plasticité, Critique, Paris : Editions de Minuit, 649-650, June–July 2001,
540-550.
Lisabeth During, Catherine Malabou and the Currency of Hegelianism, Hypatia, Fall 2000, Vol. 15, No. 4, 190-195.
Önay Sözer, Zukunft aus dem Geist der Plaztizität, Hegel Studien, Bochum, 1997, Volume 70, 28-42.

References
1. Clemens, Justin (2010). "The Age of Plastic; or, Catherine Malabou on the Hegelian Futures Market". Cosmos and
History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy, Vol 6, No 1. Open Humanities Press. Retrieved 2010-11-28.

External links
Catherine Malabou, Kingston University, London
Catherine Malabou, Paris West University Nanterre La Défense
Catherine Malabou, University of Buffalo, New York
Author Page, Villanova University, Philadelphia

Interviews

Philosophy: Pushing the Limits. An interview with Catherine Malabou listen or download Malabou interviewed by
JK Fowler on March 30, 2010