Modern individuality arises from rupture with the world, not harmony with it
Evidence
Christ is thus the figure of a pure event, the exact opposite of the habitual. … ‘Plastic individuality’ presents to the world the perfect translation of the interior into the exterior and vice versa; its serenity arises from the individual’s harmony with the objective conditions of the world. But within the Roman world, disharmony and rupture led to a different and modern conception of individuality, an individuality that tore itself away from a world grown ineffectual through brutality, that discovered its freedom wholly within itself, dependent only on the power of thought and the infinite value of the ego. — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 841
Categorization
- DEFINE: Defines ‘plastic individuality’ by contrast with the modern interiority it opposes — a core term for Malabou’s whole plasticity thesis.
- XREF: Connects directly to the reader’s stated purpose: this contrast of classical plastic harmony vs. modern ruptured interiority is the seed of plasticity’s self-differentiating logic. — connects to: Individuality is simultaneously a residue escaping the system and a wound the system inflicts; Individuality cannot escape the social system because its inner essence already embodies that system; The question is what produces individuality, not how society acts on individuals — Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival…, 137 (+9 more)
- recurring: this claim recurs 2 times within its source
Broader Connections
- The question is what produces individuality, not how society acts on individuals
#expands(0.85) — Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety, 137 - Affirming the colonized self via rupture cannot resolve psychological damage
#qualifies(0.82) — Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, 106 - Individuality is produced by entering culture, not given at birth
#complicates(0.78) - Disciplinary power produces individuality rather than merely restricting it from outside
#complicates(0.78) - Both nature’s mechanism and history’s determinism oppress the modern self
#complicates(0.75) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 163 - Emancipation from society weakens rather than empowers the individual
#qualifies(0.75) — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 169 - Modernity is trouble and a problem, not simply progress
#qualifies(0.72) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 185 - Individual identity forms dialogically through a constitutive outside, not autonomously.
#complicates(0.72) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 363