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Plasticity and Formlessness between Malabou and Bataille

Research output: Contribution to Journal/MagazineJournal articlepeer-review

Published
<mark>Journal publication date</mark>21/12/2022
<mark>Journal</mark>MLN
Issue number4
Volume137
Number of pages18
Pages (from-to)673-690
Publication StatusPublished
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

This article stages an encounter between Catherine Malabou’s plasticité and Georges Bataille’s informe. Malabou’s transdisciplinary philosophy of plasticity observes the mutability and transformability of all forms, from aesthetic forms to the neuroplastic form of the human brain. By contrast, Bataille’s informe implies that the universe is radically formless and that all attempts to give form to it are doomed. While Malabou’s plastic approach to form and Bataille’s ideological suspicion of all form might initially seem irreconcilable, this article argues that these concepts in fact intersect dynamically, developing plastic-formless approaches to form, both aesthetic and organic, between the two thinkers.