Life’s concentrated forms carry an explosive charge through contraction

Evidence

Plasticity is situated between two extremes: on one side, the taking on of form (sculpture, molding, fashioning of plastic material); on the other, the annihilation of form (plastique, detonation). Plasticity deploys its meaning between sculptural modeling and deflagration—in other words, explosion. Let us now examine this last meaning. Essentially, today we must think this double movement, contradictory and nonetheless indissociable, of the emergence and disappearance of form. At the core of the constant circulation between the neuronal, the economic, the social, and the political that characterizes Western culture today, the individual ought to occupy the midpoint between the taking on of form and the annihilation of form—between the possibility of occupying a territory and accepting the rules of deterritorialization, between the configuration of a network and its ephemeral, effaceable character. — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 231 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Presented, in the Introduction to the same work, as the ‘pure act of looking on (das reine Zusehen)’, philosophy, for Hegel, can in a certain sense be defined as this attention brought to the newborn, who is the most vivid and sensuous image of the future. Birth combines blossoming (éclosion) and explosion. A process of formation and of the dissolution of form, plasticity, where all birth takes place, should be imagined fundamentally as an ontological combustion (déflagration) which liberates the twofold possibility of the appearance and the annihilation of presence. It is a process which functions on its own, automatically. As such, it comes out of nothing; as such, it is the bearer of the future, if it is true that the future, by definition, comes from nowhere. I have tried to bring into view the chance which, in Hegel’s thought, constitutes the explosive side of subjectivity, forgotten by recent readers. — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 1254 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Contraction that gives forms also stores the energy that later explodes; Plasticity spans the capacity to give form and to explode all form. — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 40; Substance’s actuosity is simultaneously creative and destructive power — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 1102 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Contraction that gives forms also stores the energy that later explodes #corroborates (0.95)
• Plasticity spans the capacity to give form and to explode all form. #expands (0.90) — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 40
• Plasticity is ontological combustion that both births and annihilates presence #corroborates (0.90) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 1254
• Plasticity spans both the creation and the explosive annihilation of form. #corroborates (0.90) — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 231
• Substance’s actuosity is simultaneously creative and destructive power #corroborates (0.85) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 1102
• Plasticity both solidifies and explodes a rigidified past #expands (0.85)
• Plasticity frames a challenge between giving form and exploding form #expands (0.75) — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 267