Plastic Materialities: Politics, Legality, and Metamorphosis in the Work of Catherine Malabou PDF
Preview Plastic Materialities: Politics, Legality, and Metamorphosis in the Work of Catherine Malabou
Plastic Materialities Plastic Materialities POLITICS, LEGALITY, AND METAMORPHOSIS IN THE WORK OF CATHERINE MALABOU BRENNA BHANDAR AND JONATHAN GOLDBERG-HILLER, EDITORS Duke University Press ■ Durham and London ■ 2015 © 2015 Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid- free paper ∞ Typeset in Chaparral by Westchester Publishing Services Library of Congress Cataloging- in-Publication Data Plastic materialities : politics, legality, and metamorphosis in the work of Catherine Malabou / Brenna Bhandar and Jonathan Goldberg-Hiller, eds. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8223-5845-9 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-8223-5857-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Malabou, Catherine. 2. Philosophy of mind. 3. Adaptability (Psychology) 4. Brain— Philosophy. I. Bhandar, Brenna II. Goldberg-Hiller, Jonathan BD418.3.P53 2015 194—dc23 2014036269 ISBN 978-0-8223-7573-9 (e-book) Cover art: Greg Dunn, Two Pyramidals, 2010 (detail). Enamel on composition gold; 18"x 24". Courtesy of the artist. CONTENTS Acknowledgments, vii Introduction. Staging Encounters, 1 Brenna Bhandar and Jonathan Goldberg-Hiller 1 ■ Will Sovereignty Ever Be Deconstructed?, 35 Catherine Malabou 2 ■ Whither Materialism? Althusser/Darwin, 47 Catherine Malabou 3 ■ From the Overman to the Posthuman: How Many Ends?, 61 Catherine Malabou 4 ■ Autoplasticity, 73 Alain Pottage 5 ■ Plasticity, Capital, and the Dialectic, 91 Alberto Toscano 6 ■ Plasticity and the Ce re bral Unconscious: New Wounds, New Violences, New Politics, 111 Catherine Kellogg 7 ■ “Go Wonder”: Plasticity, Dissemination, and (the Mirage of) Revolution, 133 Silvana Carotenuto 8 ■ Insects, War, Plastic Life, 159 Renisa Mawani 9 ■ Zones of Justice: A Philopoetic Engagement, 189 Michael J. Shapiro 10 ■ Law, Sovereignty, and Recognition, 209 Brenna Bhandar and Jonathan Goldberg-Hiller 11 ■ Something Darkly Th is Way Comes: Th e Horror of Plasticity in an Age of Control, 233 Jairus Grove 12 ■ Th e Touring Machine (Flesh Th ought Inside Out), 265 Fred Moten 13 ■ Interview with Catherine Malabou, 287 Bibliography, 301 Contributors, 325 Index, 329 vi Contents AC KNOWL EDG MENTS ■ Th e making of this book has been a collaboration of many who have contributed time, money, and passion. We thank the authors for their scholarly engagements that led to these chapters. In addition, we would like to acknowledge the contributions of Denise Ferreira da Silva and Bradley Bryan, who participated in a seminar with the other authors from which this book emerged. Th at seminar, held in London, was funded by the National Science Foundation of the United States, with contributions from Queen Mary University of London, and the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. We deeply thank these institutions for their generosity and their trust. Courtney Berger and Ken Wissoker of Duke University Press have earned our sincere gratitude for their support, advice, and encour- agement. We sincerely thank the anonymous readers of this manuscript who off ered intellectual guidance. Finally, we thank Catherine Malabou, who met our ideas for this project with early enthusiasm and enduring friendship. INTRODUCTION Staging Encounters Brenna Bhandar and Jonathan Goldberg-Hiller ■ Catherine Malabou’s philosophical thought stages a new and restless encounter with form and so transforms the possibilities of philosophy for thinking contemporary politics, law, and justice. In a series of books, most of which have been recently translated into En glish, she has pio- neered a distinctive mode of reading the Continental philosophical tra- dition, revealing a new materialism that survives and brings to restored relevance Hegel, Heidegger, Derrida, Irigaray, Deleuze, Foucault, and Freud, among others. Traversing the philosophical groundwork of these thinkers, Malabou uncovers and exposes elements of their work that metabolize and metamorphosize concepts and logics that otherwise ap- pear to be unmoving, if not static. Th e restless form that survives philo- sophical critique, which she explores with her signature concept of plas- ticity, has its material counterparts in socioeconomic structures such as neoliberal capitalism, the science of neurobiology, the theory and prac- tice of psychoanalysis, the experience and expression of subjectivity and identity, and the po liti cal or ga ni za tion of sovereignty. Oriented fi rmly against the naturalization of these enterprises, Malabou asks us instead to see each institution engaged with a kind of immanent thought that materially grounds its potential metamorphoses. Th e form of thought today, she argues, is ontologically plastic; self- transformation is built into our bodies, it suff uses our possible readings of philosophy, and it promises us new perspectives on po liti cal and social change. De cades after a Continental turn away from structuralism, Malabou’s scholarship invites us to imagine what we might gain by reconceptualiz- ing form and bringing it back into philosophical and po liti cal grammar. In this new metamorphic structuralism,1 might we fi nd an emergent
The list of books you might like
