Animal reproduction is driven by felt deficiency between individual and genus

Evidence

One measures this gap by its effects. Hegel remarks that the animal experiences an ‘awareness’ of its own ‘deficiency (Mangel)’, an awareness which motivates it to reproduce itself. This feeling arises from the tension (Spannung) between the ‘inadequacy (Unangemessenheit) of its single actuality’ in relation to the genus. Such a tension reveals itself as an ‘urge to attain the sentiment of itself in another member of its genus, to integrate itself (integrieren) and through this mediation to link itself (zusammenschließen) with the genus, thus bringing it into being: this constitutes generation (Begattung)’. — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 539

Categorization

• DEFINE: Precise Hegelian mechanism by which animal reproduction is defined through Mangel-spurred integration with the genus.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s interest in desire as lack (Lacan later appropriates Hegelian desire) and to the mind-body gap questions in her brain work. — connects to: Naming beings by name is how humans forge relationship and forestall species loneliness — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom,…, 753; Exemplary individuals become free by forming the genus that forms them — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 588
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 539