Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-mp689 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-16T15:32:33.277Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Insubordinate Plasticity: Judith Butler and Catherine Malabou

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 September 2020

Natalie Helberg Open the ORCID record for Natalie Helberg [Opens in a new window]
Natalie Helberg*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, University of Toronto, 170 St. George St, Toronto, ONM5R 2M8
*
Corresponding author. Email: natalie.helberg@mail.utoronto.ca
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In this article, I explore the relationship between performativity, as it appears in Judith Butler's work, and plasticity, as it appears in the work of Catherine Malabou. I argue that these concepts are isomorphic. Butler and Malabou both hold that resistance to contemporary forms of power, or “insubordination,” is contingent on a subject's ability to become other than what it is; Butler articulates this ability in terms of performativity, and Malabou articulates it in terms of plasticity. I reveal the social-constructivist dimension of Malabou's work while also making apparent the extent to which Butler's work, contrary to her own way of conceptualizing it, and hence surprisingly and uneasily, presupposes a biologically basic capacity for change. Plasticity is this biologically basic capacity. Both thinkers affirm the idea that insubordinate forms of transformation can be impeded by the discourse that conditions what a subject can think. I suggest that this is an insight that must be heeded, even as I seek to affirm a form of plasticity beyond discourse.

Keywords

Judith ButlerCatherine MalabouPerformativityPlasticityInsubordinationFoucauldian Theory
Type
Articles
Information
Hypatia , Volume 35 , Issue 4 , Fall 2020 , pp. 587 - 606
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Hypatia, a Nonprofit Corporation

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bartky, Sandra. 1990. Foucault, femininity, and the modernization of patriarchal power. In Femininity and domination: Studies in the phenomenology of oppression. New York and London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Butler, Judith. 1990. Gender trouble. New York and London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Butler, Judith. 1993. Bodies that matter. New York and London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Butler, Judith. 1997. The psychic life of power. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Butler, Judith. 2004. Imitation and gender insubordination. In The Judith Butler reader, ed. Salih, Sara with Butler, Judith. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Butler, Judith, and Malabou, Catherine. 2010. Sois mon corps: Une lecture contemporaine de la domination et de la servitude chez Hegel. Paris: Bayard.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. 1982. The ends of man. In Margins of philosophy. Trans. Bass, Alan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1971. The discourse on language. In The continental philosophy reader, ed. Kearney, Richard and Rainwater, Maria. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1990. The history of sexuality: An introduction. Trans. Hurley, Robert. New York: Vintage.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 2002. The archeology of knowledge. Trans. Sheridan Smith, A. M.. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Freud, Sigmund. 1984. The ego and the id. In On metapsychology. New York: Penguin.Google Scholar
Grove, Jairus. 2015. Something darkly this way comes: The horror of plasticity in an age of control. In Plastic materialities, ed. Bhandar, Brenna and Goldberg-Hiller, Jonathan. Durham, N.C., and London: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Heyes, Cressida. 2007. Self-transformations: Foucault, ethics, and normalized bodies. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kellogg, Catherine. 2017. “You be my body for me”: Dispossession in two valences. Philosophy and Social Criticism 43 (1): 83–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Malabou, Catherine. 2008. What should we do with our brain? Trans. Rand, Sebastian. New York: Fordham University Press.Google Scholar
Malabou, Catherine. 2009. La chambre du milieu: De Hegel aux neurosciences. Paris: Hermann.Google Scholar
Malabou, Catherine. 2010. Plasticity at the dusk of writing: Dialectic, destruction, deconstruction. Trans. Shread, Carolyn. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Malabou, Catherine. 2011. Changing difference. Trans. Shread, Carolyn. Cambridge, UK: Polity.Google Scholar
Malabou, Catherine. 2012a. The new wounded: From neurosis to brain damage. Trans. Miller, Steven. New York: Fordham University Press.Google Scholar
Malabou, Catherine. 2012b. The ontology of the accident: An essay on destructive plasticity. Trans. Shread, Carolyn. Cambridge, UK: Polity.Google Scholar
Malabou, Catherine. 2013. Go wonder: Subjectivity and affects in neurobiological times. In Self and emotional life: Philosophy, psychoanalysis, and neuroscience, with Johnson, Adrian. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Malabou, Catherine. 2015a. Interview with Catherine Malabou. In Plastic materialities, ed. Bhandar, Brenna and Goldberg-Hiller, Jonathan. Durham, N.C., and London: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Malabou, Catherine. 2015b. Whither materialism? Althusser/Darwin. In Plastic materialities, ed. Bhandar, Brenna and Goldberg-Hiller, Jonathan. Durham, N.C., and London: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Malabou, Catherine. 2015c. Will sovereignty ever be deconstructed? In Plastic materialities, ed. Bhandar, Brenna and Goldberg-Hiller, Jonathan. Durham, N.C., and London: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Malabou, Catherine. 2019. Morphing intelligence: From IQ measurement to artificial brains. Trans. Shread, Carolyn. New York: Columbia University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McWhorter, Ladelle. 1999. Bodies and pleasures: Foucault and the politics of sexual normalization. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Stoljar, Natalie. 2000. Autonomy and the feminist intuition. In Relational autonomy: Feminist perspectives on autonomy, agency, and the social self, ed. Mackenzie, Catriona and Stoljar, Natalie. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar