A career-spanning collection of published and unpublished writings Catherine Malabou is one of the foremost, most innovative intelligences working in contemporary French philosophy today. Her work articulates a coherent conceptualisation of 'plasticity' by merging recent neurobiology and medicinal sciences with the history of philosophy and political theory.Across the essays gathered in Plasticity: The Promise of Explosion, Malabou carves a philosophical space between structuralism, deconstruction, cognitive psychology, psychoanalysis and speculative realism. By demonstrating the plastic transformability at the heart of these disciplines, a change that always promises future explosion, Malabou, as a female philosopher, also articulates the need to 'change difference' within patriarchal concepts of tradition itself.The collection is divided into four thematic parts, each of which showcases a major aspect of Malabou's conceptualisation of plasticity. In his introduction, Ian James situates Malabou's work within contemporary philosophy and navigates the contours of her unique work.
25 essays showcase Malabou’s rounded philosophical project: 17 previously published and 8 brand new. In them, Malabou carves a philosophical space between structuralism, deconstruction, cognitive psychology, psychoanalysis and speculative realism.
