Plasticity spans both the creation and the explosive annihilation of form.

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

Categorization

• DEFINE: The load-bearing definition: plasticity is not just the taking-on of form but also its explosive destruction — the double meaning the reader needs to catch substitution.
• XREF: connects to: Destructive plasticity creates new identity precisely through annihilation of the old — Catherine Malabou, The New Wounded: From Neurosis to Brain…, 1495; The word ‘plastic’ spans from form-giving sculpture to the annihilation of form in explosives — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 227; Substance’s actuosity is simultaneously creative and destructive power — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 1102 (+3 more)