The future arises only from putting the past’s rigidified shapes back into play
Evidence
Hegel places face to face the two epochs which constitute the history of subjectivity. On one side, the epoch marked by the repetitions and habits inherent to the teleological process. On the other, the epoch dominated by the singular ‘once and only’, by the non-habitual, inseparable from the concept of time as external. This confrontation also presents the outline of the future which, henceforth, exists in the play of the habitual and the unusual, but no longer to be understood as two eras of philosophical thought, rather as the two faces, identical in a speculative sense, of one reality: completion. Hegel’s philosophy announces that the future, from now on, depends on the way the shapes and figures already present can be put back into play, on the way the extraordinary and unexpected can only arise out of the prose of the well-known and familiar. Plasticity fulfils its promise for the future with its treatment of a past that has become rigid: if it plasticizes that past – by solidifying or laminating it – it also explodes that past, through what the French call plasticage or bombing. — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 1268
Categorization
- DEFINE: Clarifies the core plasticity concept: plasticizing the past means both solidifying and exploding it; the Franco pun on plasticage/bombing is the book’s central figure.
- DEEPTHINKING: This is the book’s culminating definitional claim — future/dialectic as the double bind of habit and rupture, ordinary and extraordinary, the past rigidified and plasticized. Dense enough to sit with.
- XREF: connects to: The future arises only from reanimating the familiar and habitual — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 1268; Plasticity’s future emerges from replaying rigid past forms — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 1268
Broader Connections
- The future arises only from reanimating the familiar and habitual
#expands(0.90) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 1268 - Plasticity’s future emerges from replaying rigid past forms
#corroborates(0.85) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 1268