The future is plastic: Refiguring Malabou’s plasticity

Abstract

This article investigates Catherine Malabou’s claims to have produced some form of beyond of deconstruction with her reworking of the Hegelian concept of “plasticity” (Plastizität). In the light of Malabou’s critique of the unsuitability of the Derridean non-concept of “text” for being a suitable metaphor for neuronal functioning in her Plasticité, I turn this question back on Malabou’s own work; that is to say, this article will examine what the implications of the metaphorics of plasticity are for Malabou’s own oeuvre and its relationship with neuroscience and her critique of connexionist capitalism. To this end, this article is particularly interested in the political claims made for plasticity and how some of the “everyday” meanings of plasticity, and Malabou’s decision not to incorporate them into her conceptual working through, might threaten this enterprise