Announcements

2024-1 (Jan-Jun. 2024): HOMAGE TO CATHERINE MALABOU

 Despite already circulating in some restricted circles and having received some citations, besides the publication of the book Ontology of the Accident by Cultura & Barbárie Publishers, the thought of philosopher Catherine Malabou has yet to be further explored in Brazilian lands.

Having received his doctoral supervision from Jacques Derrida, her thesis was entitled Hegel’s Future: plasticity, temporality, and dialectics, in which concepts such as plasticity, anticipation (voir venir), and future were discussed under a “post-deconstructive” perspectives. In this axis, it is possible to list later works that produce the same kind of reading, from the “motor scheme” of plasticity, about Heidegger, Kant, and Derrida himself.

Malabou places herself as the heir of French materialism from Diderot to Althusser, and thus becomes one of the main representatives of the current today called new materialism. This does not mean that the philosopher is subsumed under a program determined by something external to her own thinking. Throughout her trajectory, terms such as speculative naturalism or new realism also appear to situate her in the philosophical conjuncture.

From this point on, her interest in the brain and the body brought her closer to biology, producing at least three other investigative paths: the concept of destructive plasticity, at the interface between neurology, psychoanalysis and philosophy (in works such as Ontologie de l’accident, Le noveaux blessés); the works about feminism, which strongly thematize the discussion of the body (Changer de différence and Le plaisir effacé); and, finally, the studies on philosophy and brain more generally, which involve the status of neurobiology for philosophy and the discussion around biopolitics (Qui faire de notre cerveau ? Métamorphosis de l'intelligence).

In recent years, Malabou has constituted another more properly political axis, although none of his works can simply be considered non-political, approaching the concept of “mutual aid’ of Kropotkin’s anarchism. We could also highlight in this field the works around political theology that involve the critique of messianism.

 

Themes of interest:

 - Malabou and the re-reading of Kant, Hegel and Heidegger;

- Deconstruction and plasticity;

- Malabou, Feminism and Biology;

- Philosophy, neuroscience and psychoanalysis;

- Plasticity, art and literature;

- Malabou and the new materialisms

- Malabou, politics and anarchism

 

Instructions and journal guidelines are available at:

https://sistemas.uft.edu.br/periodicos/index.php/perspectivas/about/submissions

 

Deadline for submission: February 10, 2024

 

Organizers:

Moysés Pinto Neto (Lutheran University of Brazil - Canoas - RS).

Antonio Frank Jardilino Maciel (Università degli Studi Chieti-Pescara “G. d'Annunzio” - Italy)