Without destruction of prior form, identity cannot sustain itself.

Evidence

Despite the explosive resonance of the meanings of plasticity, this vision of things obviously does not correspond to a terrorist conception of the constitution of identity. The explosions in question are clearly understood as energetic discharges, creative bursts that progressively transform nature into freedom. To insist on explosive surges is to say that we are not flexible in the sense that all change of identity is a critical test, which leaves some traces, effaces others, resists its own test, and tolerates no polymorphism. Paradoxically, if we were flexible, in other words, if we didn’t explode at each transition, if we didn’t destroy ourselves a bit, we could not live. — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 245

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines flexibility as that which tolerates polymorphism and resists no test — the key contrast that makes the plasticity claim detonative.
• DEEPTHINKING: The paradox — we need to destroy ourselves a bit at each transition in order to live — is a dense, nearly aphoristic claim about identity that rewards sustained return.
• XREF: connects to: Roles are enacted, never inhabited, because identity would collapse into inert being — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 343; The unified self is a fragile construction sustained against the lure of dissolution. — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 48; The diseased soul fails either to self-differentiate or to persist as identity — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 365 (+7 more)