Plasticity holds origin and self-abandonment together in one capacity

Evidence

What is fascinating about stem cells is that they bring together the origin, as their name indicates, and the future, the capacity for self re-form. Is this not the best possible definition of plasticity: the relation that an individual entertains with what, on the one hand, attaches him originally to himself, to his proper form, and with what, on the other hand, allows him to launch himself into the void of all identity, to abandon all rigid and fixed determination? — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 259 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

We can see it now: there are not just one but many plasticities of cerebral functioning. The interaction of these plastic modalities sketches an organization that does not at all correspond to traditional representations of the brain as a machine without autonomy, without suppleness, without becoming—representations that today have become true ”epistemological obstacles.” It is urgent that we affirm, against these representations, which no longer represent anything at all, that our brain is in part essentially what we do with it. Individual experience opens up, in the program itself, a dimension usually taken to be the very antithesis of the notion of a program: the historical dimension. Plasticity, between determinism and freedom, designates all the types of transformation deployed between the closed meaning of plasticity (the definitive character of form) and its open meaning (the malleability of form). It does this to such a degree that cerebral systems today appear as selfsculpted structures that, without being elastic or polymorphic, still tolerate constant self-reworking, differences in destiny, and the fashioning of a singular identity. — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 109 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Plasticity names the concept’s reflexive power to both give and receive its own figures — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 68; Plasticity for Hegel means the future exceeding itself and time exceeding itself — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 210; Plasticity means receiving form while resisting deformation, and extends to tissue regrowth — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 226 (+19 more)

Broader Connections

• Plasticity holds together originary attachment and the capacity to abandon fixed form. #corroborates (0.95)
• Plasticity holds original form and full self-transformation together #corroborates (0.92) — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 259
• Plasticity spans a spectrum from fixed form to total malleability #complicates (0.78) — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 109
• Plasticity is structural transformation operating within closure rather than beyond it #complicates (0.76) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 1281
• Plasticity spans from rigid determination of form to total freedom from form #complicates (0.75) — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 67