Identity formation requires both constitution and effacement of forms

Evidence

These extreme examples concern us all. We are right to assert that the formation of each identity is a kind of resilience, in other words, a kind of contradictory construction, a synthesis of memory and forgetting, of constitution and effacement of forms. In excluding all negativity from their discourse, in chasing away every conflictual consideration on the transition from the neuronal to the mental, certain neuroscientists cannot, most of the time, escape the con- fines of a well-meaning conception of successful personality, ”harmonious and mature.” But we have no use for harmony and maturity if they only serve to make us ”scrappers” or ”prodigal elders.” Creating resistance to neuronal ideology is what our brain wants, and what we want for it. — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 254

Categorization

• DEFINE: Resilience is redefined as a contradictory synthesis of memory and forgetting, constitution and effacement — not mere harmony.
• XREF: Ties to the book’s core plasticity-vs-flexibility distinction: plasticity’s explosive/negative dimension reappears here as the effacement that identity needs. — connects to: Reworking gender needs both transcendence and affirmation of identity. — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 255