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Forms of Living
The New Wounded: From Neurosis to Brain Damage
This book employs a philosophical approach to the “new wounded” (brain lesion patients) to stage a confrontation between psychoanalysis and contemporary neurobiology, focused on the issue of trauma and psychic wounds. It thereby reevaluates the brain as an organ that is not separated from psychic life but rather at its center.
The “new wounded” suffer from psychic wounds that traditional psychoanalysis, with its emphasis on the psyche’s need to integrate events into its own history, cannot understand or cure. They are victims of various cerebral lesions or attacks, including degenerative brain diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.
Changes caused by cerebral lesions frequently manifest themselves as an unprecedented metamorphosis in the patient’s identity. A person with Alzheimer’s disease, for example, is not―or not only―someone who has “changed” or been “modified” but rather a subject who has become someone else.
The behavior of subjects who are victims of “sociopolitical traumas,” such as abuse, war, terrorist attacks, or sexual assaults, displays striking resemblances to that of subjects who have suffered brain damage. Thus today the border separating organic trauma and sociopolitical trauma is increasingly porous.
Effacing the limits that separate “neurobiology” from “sociopathy,” brain damage tends also to blur the boundaries between history and nature. At the same time, it reveals that political oppression today assumes the guise of a traumatic blow stripped of all justification. We are thus dealing with a strange mixture of nature and politics, in which politics takes on the appearance of nature, and nature disappears in order to assume the mask of politics.
The “new wounded” suffer from psychic wounds that traditional psychoanalysis, with its emphasis on the psyche’s need to integrate events into its own history, cannot understand or cure. They are victims of various cerebral lesions or attacks, including degenerative brain diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.
Changes caused by cerebral lesions frequently manifest themselves as an unprecedented metamorphosis in the patient’s identity. A person with Alzheimer’s disease, for example, is not―or not only―someone who has “changed” or been “modified” but rather a subject who has become someone else.
The behavior of subjects who are victims of “sociopolitical traumas,” such as abuse, war, terrorist attacks, or sexual assaults, displays striking resemblances to that of subjects who have suffered brain damage. Thus today the border separating organic trauma and sociopolitical trauma is increasingly porous.
Effacing the limits that separate “neurobiology” from “sociopathy,” brain damage tends also to blur the boundaries between history and nature. At the same time, it reveals that political oppression today assumes the guise of a traumatic blow stripped of all justification. We are thus dealing with a strange mixture of nature and politics, in which politics takes on the appearance of nature, and nature disappears in order to assume the mask of politics.
268 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2007
7 people are currently reading
337 people want to read
About the author
Catherine Malabou
60 books125 followersCatherine Malabou (b. 1959) is a French philosopher. She is a professor of philosophy at The European Graduate School / EGS and professor of modern European philosophy at the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy (CRMEP) at Kingston University, London. She is known for her work on plasticity, a concept she culled from Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, which has proved fertile within contemporary economic, political, and social discourses. Widely regarded as one of the most exciting figures in what has been called “The New French Philosophy,” Malabou’s research and writing covers a range of figures and issues, including the work of Hegel, Freud, Heidegger, and Derrida; the relationship between philosophy, neuroscience, and psychoanalysis; and concepts of essence and difference within feminism.
Born in Sidi Bel Abbès, Algeria, Catherine Malabou began her advanced studies at the Université Paris-Sorbonne before attending the prestigious École normale supérieure de Fontenay-Saint-Cloud, where, in 1994, she submitted her dissertation on G.W.F. Hegel under the direction of Jacques Derrida. Her thesis was published in 1996 under the title L’avenir de Hegel: Plasticité, temporalité, dialectique (The Future of Hegel: Plasticity, Temporality and Dialectic, 2005) with a long preface by Derrida, whom she would later co-author La Contre-allée (1999; Counterpath, 2004). Before arriving at Kingston University, Malabou became assistant professor at the Université Paris Ouest Nanterre in 1995 and, as a frequent lecturer in the USA, has taught at UC Berkeley, The New School in New York City, New York State University at Buffalo, the University of Wisconsin in Madison, UCLA, Johns Hopkins, and, most recently, UC Irvine.
Catherine Malabou’s philosophical work forges new connections and intellectual networks that imaginatively leap across existing synaptic gaps between, for example, continental philosophy and neuroscience; the philosophy of neuroscience and the critique of capitalism; neuroscience and psychoanalysis; and continental and analytic philosophy (notably Kant). As well, her work is explosive and iconoclastic, shattering perceived understandings of Hegel, feminism and gender, and the implications of post-structuralism.
Starting with her 2004 book, Que faire de notre cerveau? (What Should We Do With Our Brain?, 2009), Catherine Malabou has argued passionately and provocatively for a connection between continental philosophy and empirical neuroscience. She centers her argument on a highly original interpretation of the concept of plasticity, an interpretation that she first uncovered in her reading of Hegel’s dialectic. Plasticity refers to the capacity both to receive form and to give form. Although the concept of plasticity is central to neuroscience, Malabou’s work shows that neuroscientists and lay people often misunderstand the basic plasticity of the brain, succumbing to an ideology that focuses solely on its capacity to receive form, that is, the capacity of the brain to be shaped in and through its experience of the world to the exclusion of its creative, form-giving power. In other words, the reigning ideology that governs both the neuroscientific community and the broader culture substitutes flexibility for plasticity, and flexibility, Malabou warns us, “is plasticity minus its genius.” The emphasis on flexibility also fits all too neatly with the demands of capitalism under neoliberalism, which demands efficiency, flexibility, adaptability and versatility as conditions of employability in a post-Fordist economy. The creative, form-giving power of the brain—its genius—consists in its explosive capacity, a capacity that unleashes new possibilities, and herein also lies the capacity for resistance. In her conclusion, Catherine Malabou writes: “To ask ‘What should we do with our brain?’ is above all to visualize the possibility of saying no to an afflicting economic, political, and mediatic culture that celebrate
Born in Sidi Bel Abbès, Algeria, Catherine Malabou began her advanced studies at the Université Paris-Sorbonne before attending the prestigious École normale supérieure de Fontenay-Saint-Cloud, where, in 1994, she submitted her dissertation on G.W.F. Hegel under the direction of Jacques Derrida. Her thesis was published in 1996 under the title L’avenir de Hegel: Plasticité, temporalité, dialectique (The Future of Hegel: Plasticity, Temporality and Dialectic, 2005) with a long preface by Derrida, whom she would later co-author La Contre-allée (1999; Counterpath, 2004). Before arriving at Kingston University, Malabou became assistant professor at the Université Paris Ouest Nanterre in 1995 and, as a frequent lecturer in the USA, has taught at UC Berkeley, The New School in New York City, New York State University at Buffalo, the University of Wisconsin in Madison, UCLA, Johns Hopkins, and, most recently, UC Irvine.
Catherine Malabou’s philosophical work forges new connections and intellectual networks that imaginatively leap across existing synaptic gaps between, for example, continental philosophy and neuroscience; the philosophy of neuroscience and the critique of capitalism; neuroscience and psychoanalysis; and continental and analytic philosophy (notably Kant). As well, her work is explosive and iconoclastic, shattering perceived understandings of Hegel, feminism and gender, and the implications of post-structuralism.
Starting with her 2004 book, Que faire de notre cerveau? (What Should We Do With Our Brain?, 2009), Catherine Malabou has argued passionately and provocatively for a connection between continental philosophy and empirical neuroscience. She centers her argument on a highly original interpretation of the concept of plasticity, an interpretation that she first uncovered in her reading of Hegel’s dialectic. Plasticity refers to the capacity both to receive form and to give form. Although the concept of plasticity is central to neuroscience, Malabou’s work shows that neuroscientists and lay people often misunderstand the basic plasticity of the brain, succumbing to an ideology that focuses solely on its capacity to receive form, that is, the capacity of the brain to be shaped in and through its experience of the world to the exclusion of its creative, form-giving power. In other words, the reigning ideology that governs both the neuroscientific community and the broader culture substitutes flexibility for plasticity, and flexibility, Malabou warns us, “is plasticity minus its genius.” The emphasis on flexibility also fits all too neatly with the demands of capitalism under neoliberalism, which demands efficiency, flexibility, adaptability and versatility as conditions of employability in a post-Fordist economy. The creative, form-giving power of the brain—its genius—consists in its explosive capacity, a capacity that unleashes new possibilities, and herein also lies the capacity for resistance. In her conclusion, Catherine Malabou writes: “To ask ‘What should we do with our brain?’ is above all to visualize the possibility of saying no to an afflicting economic, political, and mediatic culture that celebrate
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
October 11, 2017
An excellent analysis of the limits of psychoanalysis in understanding and addressing brain damage, where the resulting identity and trauma cannot be understood or interpreted in reference to one’s past. Given that contemporary neurology observes this change, but does not think it, the need for a new neuropsychoanalysis that address the limits of both is in order, and that is exactly what Malabou shows in conceptualizing destructive plasticity as the possible form of the death drive that Freud was never able to find. One thing to note is that without a careful reading, it is far too easy to take Malabou’s work as more essentialist, exculpating, and pessimistic than it really it. She makes clear her commitments and also the limits of her claims. It is a dense read with a lot of Freudian psychoanalysis, but one that I found to be well worth it, particularly given the absence of theorization regarding destructive plasticity anywhere else.
October 7, 2017
One point for writing philosophy about brain injury (THANK YOU). Another point for the emphasis on emotion, and the varied, complex ways of puzzling out how emotion and mental life intersect. Another point for telling me things about Freud I didn't know (his legal battle with Werner-Jauregg over whether post-traumatic stress disorder could exist). But, not quite there... rampantly speculative, ignorant of the neuroscience, and worse, ignorant of the inner mental lives of people affected by neurological conditions. The author needs to go into the field and study the people, not just the books (the same can be said for most Continental theory, really).
July 21, 2018
This book offers a philosophical account of brain injury and neurosis. It was great for the most part (especially her analysis of Freudian theory) but I did, however, feel that Malabou overstated her characterization of patients with brain damage (i.e. that the new wounded are "cool, detached, and nihilistic") and her passages relating to the neuroanatomy of brain injury were a bit lacking.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
to-keep-reference
October 18, 2016¿Qué es lo que hace que nuestro momento histórico sea singular? Empecemos con un ejemplo inesperado: George Soros es, sin duda, un honesto humanitario cuya fundación Open Society más o menos en solitario salvó el pensamiento social crítico en los países poscomunistas. Sin embargo, hace más o menos una década, el mismo George Soros se dedicó a la especulación en el mercado monetario, explotando las diferencias en los tipos de interés para obtener cientos de millones de dólares. Esta operación enormemente exitosa también ocasionó un sufrimiento incalculable, especialmente en Asia del Sureste, donde cientos de miles de personas perdieron sus trabajos, con todas las consecuencias que eso conlleva. Esta es la actual violencia «abstracta» en todo su esplendor: en un extremo, la especulación financiera perseguida en su propia esfera, sin ninguna vinculación evidente con la realidad de las vidas humanas; en el otro extremo, una catástrofe pseudonatural que golpeó a miles como un tsunami, sin ninguna razón aparente. La violencia actual es como un especulativo «juicio infinito» hegeliano postulando la identidad de estos dos extremos. Las consecuencias psicológicas de este ascenso de las nuevas formas de violencia «abstracta» son el tema de Les nouveaux blessés, de Catherine Malabou.
Viviendo en el Final de los Tiempos Pág.303 y discutido en todo el capítulo IV: Depresión.
Viviendo en el Final de los Tiempos Pág.303 y discutido en todo el capítulo IV: Depresión.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews