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Plasticity means both receiving and giving form, unlike mere malleability

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tagsja-picks, define, xref, seed, definitional_content, trade, corroborated, recurring, category/definitional-content
aliases@malabou_what_2004, loc. 39

3 min read

Plasticity means both receiving and giving form, unlike mere malleability

Evidence

According to its etymology—from the Greek plassein, to mold —the word plasticity has two basic senses: it means at once the capacity to receive form (clay is called ”plastic,” for example) and the capacity to give form (as in the plastic arts or in plastic surgery). Talking about the plasticity of the brain thus amounts to thinking of the brain as something modifiable, ”formable,” and formative at the same time. — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 39

To elaborate (travailler) the concept of ‘plasticity’ will, following Canguilhem’s usage, amount to ‘giving the function of a form’ to a term which itself, in its first sense, describes or designates the act of giving form. The English and French substantives ‘plasticity’ and plasticité and their German equivalent, Plastizität, entered the language in the eighteenth century. They joined two words already in use which had been formed from the same root: the substantive ‘plastics’ (die Plastik), and the adjective ‘plastic’ (plastisch). All three words are derived from the Greek plassein (πλσσειν), which means ‘to model’, ‘to mould’. ‘Plastic’, as an adjective, means two things: on the one hand, to be ‘susceptible to changes of form’ or malleable (clay is a ‘plastic’ material); and on the other hand, ‘having the power to bestow form, the power to mould’, as in the expressions, ‘plastic surgeon’ and ‘plastic arts’. This twofold signification is met again in the German adjective plastisch. Grimm’s dictionary defines it thus: ‘that which takes or gives shape, or figure, to bodies’ (körperlich … gestaltend oder gestaltet). Plasticité, or ‘plasticity’, just like Plaztizität in German, describes the nature of that which is ‘plastic’, being at once capable of receiving and of giving form. — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 223

Categorization

  • DEFINE: The core distinction: plasticity is bidirectional (receive AND give form); this is the precise definition the reader needs to catch substitutions.
  • XREF: Directly feeds the plasticity-vs-flexibility distinction the reader wants to state; flexibility only receives form, plasticity gives and destroys it. — 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; The schema is the plastic form mediating giving and receiving — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 68; Plasticity names the unity of spontaneity and receptivity in giving and receiving form (+10 more)
  • SEED: An essay angle: how ‘plasticity’ as both patient and agent of form (clay vs. sculptor) was flattened in neuroscience to mean only malleability, losing the generative half — exactly the critique Malabou later makes of plasticity’s ‘annihilation’ or neutralization in contemporary discourse.
  • corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 39; Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 223
  • recurring: this claim recurs 5 times within its source

Broader Connections

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