The brain is an organic tension, not a model for economic organization

Evidence

Of course, although Hegel could not yet express himself in the idiom of the ”neuronal” and the ”mental,” his constant preoccupation was the transformation of the mind’s natural existence (the brain, which he still calls the ”natural soul”) into its historical and speculative being. But this transformation is the dialectic itself. If there can be a transition from nature to thought, this is because the nature of thought contradicts itself. Thus the transition from a purely biological entity to a mental entity takes place in the struggle of the one against the other, producing the truth of their relation. Thought is therefore nothing but nature, but a negated nature, marked by its own difference from itself. The world is not the calm prolonging of the biological. The mental is not the wise appendix of the neuronal. And the brain is not the natural ideal of globalized economic, political, and social organization; it is the locus of an organic tension that is the basis of our history and our critical activity. — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 263

Categorization

• DEFINE: Frames plasticity as dialectical negativity — the brain as site of contradiction, which is the exact opposite of the ‘flexible = compliant’ reading.
• XREF: Resonates with the reader’s goal of catching the brain-workplace analogy: here Malabou explicitly rejects reading the brain as the ‘natural ideal’ of economic organization, which is the assertion-vs-argument question the reader wants to track.