Catherine Malabou

Catherine Malabou (* 1959 ) is a French philosopher .

life and work

Malabou is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Paris-Nanterre and Visiting Professor of Comparative Literature at the State University of New York in Buffalo . She is editor of the philosophical series «Non et Non» at Editions Léo Scheer.

In much of her work, she examines the relationship between dialectics and deconstruction through the concept of "plasticity". In her book L'avenir de Hegel: plasticité, temporalité, dialectique (her dissertation, which she wrote at EHESS under the supervision of Jacques Derrida), she argues that plasticity denotes the possibility of taking up and giving form at the same time and thus for to open the future. The term plasticity not only describes shape, but on the contrary it can also be understood as the destruction of all form.

On the one hand, she takes her concept of plasticity from Hegel, on the other hand, from the current state of neuroscience. In her book What do with our brains? it shows new models of organization, new configurations of being and new systematic functions.

La Countre-allée is the result of a collaboration with Jacques Derrida , a collection of randomly arranged chapters on Derrida's thinking, his character and the concept of travel. She reads Derrida's concept of «différance» again in order to pose the question of the trace and the regeneration, which in its plasticity could represent a post-deconstructivist concept. The book contains postcards from Derrida to Malabou that provide an answer to her emerging work.

In Le Change Heidegger , Malabou examines the relationship between negativity and transformation. Les nouveaux blessés represents a dialogue between Hegel and Freud that deals with denial, denial, rejection and death. Through the phenomenon of trauma, she tries to think of the interface between neuroscience, psychoanalysis and philosophy.

literature

German

• What to do with our brain , Zurich / Berlin: diaphanes 2006, ISBN 978-3-935300-73-5
• Ontology of the accidental. About the destructive plasticity of the brain , Berlin: Merve 2011, ISBN 978-3-88396-296-2 .

French

• L'avenir de Hegel: plasticité, temporalité, dialectique , Paris: Vrin 1996, ISBN 978-2-7116-1284-0
• La Contre-allée (Voyager avec Jacques Derrida) , with Jacques Derrida , Paris: Quinzaine Littéraire 1999, ISBN 978-2-910491-08-6
• Plasticité , actes du colloque du Fresnoy, octobre 1999 (ed.), Paris: Scheer 2000, ISBN 978-2-914172-06-6
• Le Change Heidegger: du fantastique en philosophie , Paris: Scheer 2004, ISBN 978-2-915280-19-7
• Que faire de notre cerveau? , Paris: Bayard 2004, ISBN 978-2-227-47305-8
• La Plasticité au soir de l'écriture , Paris: Scheer 2005, ISBN 978-2-915280-63-0
• Les Nouveaux blessés. De Freud à la neurologie, penser les traumatismes contemporains , Paris: Bayard 2007, ISBN 978-2-227-47475-8
• Ontologie de l'accident , Paris: Léo Scheer 2009, ISBN 978-2-7561-0160-6
• La Chambre du milieu. De Hegel aux neurosciences , Paris: Hermann 2009, ISBN 978-2-7056-6779-5
• Changer de différence , Paris: Galilée 2009, ISBN 978-2-7186-0802-0
• La Grande Exclusion , with Xavier Emmanuelli , Paris: Bayard 2009, ISBN 978-2-227-47915-9
• Sois mon corps , with Judith Butler , Paris: Bayard 2010, ISBN 978-2-227-48144-2

Web links

• Website at the University of Paris-Nanterre
• Website at the State University of New York, Buffalo