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Benjamin Dalton, "Catherine Malabou and Contemporary French Literature and Film: Witnessing Plasticity" (Edinburgh UP, 2026)
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B
Welcome to the New Books Network.
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A
Hello, everyone. This is Victoria Lupasko, one of the hosts for the New Books Network. And today we are here with Dr. Benjamin Dalton, lecturer in French Studies in the School of Global affairs in the Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at Lancaster University. Hello, Dr. Dalton, and welcome to our channel.
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B
Thanks so much for having me, Victoria. I'm really happy to be here.
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A
Absolutely. And of course, it goes without saying, thank you very much for agreeing to talk to us about your book, Catherine Malibu and the Contemporary French Literature and Witnessing Plasticity, published by Edinburgh University Press in 2026 in open access, which is very helpful for many of us. And before all the questions about the book, I just wanted to ask you about just your work, your path to getting to this work and how you came to this project. What got you interested in the philosophy of Catholic in Malibu and, you know, the idea of plasticity as well.
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B
Yeah, okay. Interesting question. So, I mean, this goes back quite a long way now to, I guess when I was at university as an undergraduate and then when I started doing my ma I'll try not until like the whole history and like, odyssey of this. But I studied languages at university. I did French and German and I was particularly, particularly. Well, towards the end of my degree, I was getting really interested in philosophy, but particularly philosophies of the body and in the French context and philosophies of gender and of sexuality in particular, kind of queer sexuality and queer theory. So I was always looking for philosophers to help me think about the body and its materiality and how it changes and how to understand the experience of the body, etc. And you know, I'd, I'd, I'd looked at all the kind of classic French philosophers you'd think of when thinking about the body, from, you know, Deleuze and Guattari to Foucault, you know, every, all of the usual suspects, basically. But in my MA I was kind of Looking around, kind of wanted to kind of go down a slightly different, different path. And my supervisor for. For one of my essays during my ma, who's Dr. Amelina Damlay, said to me, oh, well, you know, have you, have you ever read any Catherine Malabu? She. She's a French philosopher writing now, and she works a lot on the brain and, and contemporary neuroscience and ideas of plasticity. Why don't you give this a read? And so I did. And I remember it was like Christmas 2015 or something like that. I ordered Malibu's book what Should We Do With Our brain? It was 2014, I think, what Should We Do With Our Brain? And I read it over Christmas and loved it. I'd never read anything like it, really, in that it was the first time I'd kind of read, I don't know, an Engagement with neuroscience through philosophy, which sounded anything like it, really. And I was just super inspired by it. So I started reading all of, kind of every Malibu book I could get my hands on, et cetera, and ended up proposing a project on malibu for my PhD. And then when I started my PhD the next year, I knew I was going to write about Malibu, and I knew that plasticity was going to be kind of part of the project, but I didn't, you know, as. As with everyone at the start of their PhD, I didn't quite know what form it was going to take. So for. For people who don't know Catherine Malibu's work and her central concept of plasticity. So, so Malibu is a contemporary French philosopher whose work spans multiple different disciplines. So she writes kind of between philosophy, the kind of life sciences in particular, neuroscience, epigenetics. But, you know, her work also touches on kind of gender studies, queer theory, literary studies. You know, she. She looks at film literature. It's a. It's a really interestingly diverse corpus, but kind of the, The. The center of orbit, I guess, of. Of her work is this. This concept of plasticity, which for Malibu is kind of a concept that explores how things change or how they take shape, you know, so when we think of something as being plastic, you can think of it as something that is kind of, you know, moldable or squidgy in a way or can be changed in terms of its form. So you think of, you know, the plastic arts, for example, talk about sculpture, and sculpture is. Is arrived at via a plastic molding of a particular material to create a particular form, et cetera. So Malibu is interested in this concept of plasticity, which she explores across all of these different Fields. And right at the start of her work, she says plasticity has emerged suddenly on the scene as a concept that is suddenly at the heart of so many different disciplines, be that art or philosophy or neuroscience, et cetera. So her first books are kind of exploring plasticity in those different disciplinary areas. Her first book is on Hegel and his philosophy and his own use of the word plastic, which she kind of explores to mean different elements of change or transformation in Hegel. But then she also very much engages with neuroscience and neuroscientific definitions of neuroplasticity. So, you know, I'm sure we've all heard of kind of this concept of neuroplasticity, which is at the center of the neurosciences and contemporary understandings of the brain. And it's all about, really, how brains change and transform throughout life in experience to, you know, sorry, in response to experience or in response to injury. You know, our brains are always changing and allowing us to adapt to face life's different challenges. And so Malibu kind of dialogues with that as well, and with these scientific descriptions of neuroplasticity, I guess, you know, Malibu's central question could be summed up as if it is the case that we are plastic or we live in a plastic world in which things that we originally thought were fixed and immutable are now known to be mutable and plastic and changeable. How do we engage ethically and critically, but also creatively with that. With that knowledge? You know, if our. If our brains are plastic and if we can, if we're always changing and transformable and both kind of susceptible to being formed by exterior forces, but also able to shape ourselves internally as well, what do we do with that? What do we do? Well, that's the question. That is literally the title of Malibu's book on the brain. What should we do with our brain? And she asks, you know, if our brains are plastic, how do we use those plastic brains for good, creative, resistant, critical things? How do we use those to change the world in a emancipatory and empowering way, rather than simply just kind of become docile subjects to the world around us? But anyway, all of that to say, here I am, having started reading Malibu right at the start of my PhD, which started in 2015, and right at the start of my. I mean, it's a story I've told so many times now, but right at the start of my PhD, I was, unfortunately attacked whilst out on a date. I was on a date with another guy, and we were involved in a Homophobic attack. And. Yeah, and so I was kind of knocked out and taken to hospital and I had a scan of my brain to check that I didn't have any concussion. And they found out that I had an undiagnosed brain tumor that had nothing to do with the attack, you know, nothing to do with any of that. And that, you know, if it hadn't been for that, I wouldn't have known about. And the tumor was benign, thank God. Still is. I still have it. But it was blocking a part of my brain. It was blocking the aqueduct of Sylvius in my brain, which meant that my brain was flooding with cerebral spinal fluid and I had hydrocephalus, which could have been, you know, really problematic if left untreated. So yeah, so it was, it was like a whirlwind. It was a whirlwind. Suddenly I was faced with both my academic interest in the brain, but also like my personal interest in the brain and also my personal journey through kind of having brain surgery and being in hospital, etc. Kind of really, I guess, brought my work on philosophy and Malibu and the Brain into dialogue with questions of health and medicine and the medical humanities. And that's kind of how this project got born really, I guess, was from the, the intersection between the personal and the academic at that point in my life. So, so there you go. That's, that's, that's the story of how it got started.
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A
Wow. That. Yes, it was, you know, the roller coaster here, like, wow. Well, I'm very happy that, you know, nothing was, was, you know, that is benign and you know, things are, you know, that you recovered well and you know, the project also continued. But also your life was, you know, restored to, to, to a rhythm that was on, you know, according to what you wanted to do. But it must have been a shock, I'm sure. And you know, but you know, I mean, you know, without going into personal details, I feel like sometimes kind of having some sort of connection between the personal and the academic work that we do. Some gives some sort of a, I don't know, lifelong project type of aura to it in a way. Yeah, I don't know. But you know, I'm a little bit, you know, thinking how the, you know, neuroplasticity, you know, makes us adapt to things that we never thought we would adapt to. And you know, to make the transition into the book, I do have to say that this is the first book length study on Malibu and plasticity in relation to literature and film specifically. And that's A quote from page 10. And after reading it, it engages wonderfully with the ways in which narrative intertwines with ways of being, ways of advancing in life, and, of course, with Malibu's philosophy. And the introduction that is entitled Witnessing Plasticity with Malibu Literature and Film, I think brings us closer to her philosophy and prop is the development of the concept of a Witness. And that was very intriguing to me, and I wanted to ask you about it, you know, the ethical responsibility of the Witness. And, you know, maybe how is this coming out in Malibu's philosophy, the idea of witnessing as an ethical responsibility and, you know, if we can extend it to ourselves as well. Right, the Witness through the writing. Right. That we do.
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B
Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, as. As you say, the. The concept of the Witness became very central to my analyses of Malibu in relation to literature and film. And that emerged quite gradually, I think, throughout my PhD research, becoming clearer and clearer to me kind of as I. As I went through it, I think. So, you know, in Malibu's first book, the Future of Hegel, she talks about how she discovers the concept of plasticity in the work of Hegel and how her reading of Hegel finds something that is almost hidden or is barely, you know, present there or barely visible. So, you know, this concept of plasticity, which Hegel really only kind of looks at a few times, like, you know, Malibu, in her book, kind of notes those three or four main moments where Hegel is talking about plasticity. But then Malibu's reading kind of takes that very tiny, those very almost imperceptible moments of plasticity and grows them and expands them in her own reading until basically they form the entire materiality of the Heygate alien system, according to Malibu. So I guess, you know, I had that in the back of my mind, and I guess, you know, I was always kind of trying to kind of, like, pay attention to is there, you know, what is it that, like, might be hidden in Malibu's, you know, own work? Like, what is it that's kind of, like, there? Or maybe I didn't have this consciously at the front of my mind or. Or, you know, I don't really know how it happened, really, but I started to notice that there were kind of elements of Malibu's work here and there where she started to talk about the figure of the Witness. Well, without really kind of making it a concept or a figure, but every now and then there was this word witness, or timois, which I found really interesting. And this figure of the Witness, or the Timwa, seemed to occur in Malibu at moments in her philosophy where there were kind of really kind of interesting or difficult ethical problems happening. So I think one of these examples would be in her work Ontology of the Accident, an essay on destructive plasticity, which she brought out in 2009 in the original French and was then Translated into English three years later, I think, in 2012 by Carolyn Shred. And that book is all about what Malibu terms destructive plasticity. So what happens when plasticity does not kind of work in the same way as a kind of plastic arts understanding of plasticity, this kind of idea of aesthetic form or kind of shaping the beautiful sculpture or something like that, but rather when plasticity creates forms of destruction, which Malibu argues is a completely forgotten and unexplored element of plasticity that we often think of plasticity as something that is uniquely positive and formative and creative. But also, as Malibu underlines, plasticity can also be destructive and traumatic and horrifying. So Malibu gives the example of brain disease and brain injury, where she looks at people who have undergone kind of irreparable traumatic transformations resulting from a brain injury. So, you know, the neuroscientist Antonio DiMarzio looks at cases like this, for example, where, you know, there was a famous case of a man called Phineas Gage, who was a railroad worker who had a horrific injury one day where a. An iron rod went through his head while he was working, and it. It went through an important part of his brain and completely changed his personality. And people around him were saying, well, the famous line is, gauge is not Gage anymore. You know, he's transformed so much that we can know we cannot recognize him as the person that he previously was. So Malibu talks about this and many other examples as an example of destructive plasticity. So a creation that creates precisely out of destruction, a form that we wouldn't necessarily have chosen, but which is a creative form nonetheless, just one kind of arising from trauma. And I think kind of in that book and another book that she writes just a little bit before on the same topic called the New Wounded Again, every now and then, I notice this word, you know, I think she says, and I'm not quoting directly here, but something like, you know, these people are witness of transformations. And it got me thinking, yeah, what does it mean to bear witness to the. To these types of transformations both in ourselves? So, you know, we're always transforming in our brains, as I've kind of said previously, but also in terms of our bodies and our lives and the worlds around us, et cetera. How is it. That we bear witness to the changes, the plastic changes happening within ourselves. Be those changes positive or. Or, you know, completely horrifying and destructive in which we. We no longer come to recognize ourselves or something like this. And how do we witness the. The changes and transformations of others around us as well? So, you know, in her book, the New Wounded, Malibu kind of starts with a personal example, which is the example of her grandmother, who at the end of her life was suffering from Alzheimer's. And Malibu kind of talks about not knowing what to do when she was around her grandmother. You know, did she. When. When she was in kind of clinical environments, was. Did she need to try and, you know, help her grandmother remember her previous life or. Or did she need to kind of help her grandmother kind of recognize that something had changed within her or come to grips with her own kind of absence to herself? Which is kind of the conclusion that Malibu comes to, I think, in that. In that early part of that book. But either way, I think that this idea of the witness was kind of lurking there in the background. And, you know, I didn't notice it at first, but then I think it started to become more and more visible to me. And I think it has a link also to this question of narrative as well. Because, you know, as, you know, this is a book about Malibu in relation to literature and film. And the book really explores what happens between Malibu and literature and film. What role do literature and film play within Malibu's philosophy itself? But the reverse also, how can literature and film allow us to read or encounter or expand upon or challenge or, you know, any of that aspects of Malibu's philosophy as well as. And obviously with literature and film, you often come up against this question of narrative. So what is the story that is being told here? And in terms of narratives of change or transformation or metamorphosis, how is that told? Is change told in a linear narrative? Or, you know, in terms of those more kind of radical, destructive changes that Malibu looks at in her work on destructive plasticity? Are those linear narratives, you know, able to function anymore? Or is some other kind of form needed? So I guess my question to myself in writing the book was, what kind of witness is literature and film when faced with plasticity? Or in what ways can literature and film be bear witness to plasticity in our bodies, in the bodies of others in the world? Because I really kind of saw Malibu's work itself as kind of being a witness to plasticity right from the very beginning, in fact. And I think I start the book actually with A quote from Malibu's early edited collection, which came out in the year 2000, in which I think this is a book that follows on from a conference that Malibu held on plasticity, in which she invited people from all different disciplines who are working on elements of plasticity to come together and discuss the concept. So she had people there from neuroscience, people there from photography and film, people there from philosophy, people there from music studies. You know, a real diverse group of people. And I'll just read the first line because. Which includes a quote from Malibu. So in her introduction to that book, Malibu says that so urgently demands the floor. And then she says that a keener gaze. This is my translation of it. A keener gaze and a sharper ear allow us to kind of hear or notice plasticity within these different discourses. So already from that start, there's kind of Malibu saying, well, plasticity is there, but we need to be attuned to it in a particular kind of way in order for us to be able to, well, know it's there, basically. So is it that we need to look harder or listen more carefully? So there's this kind of, you know, skill almost, that she's looking at back then that is required in order to. Well, I would say in order to bear witness to plasticity, to see that it is there. You know, this is perhaps, you know, like what was going on in her first book, the Future of Hegel, when Malibu kind of uncovers, in an almost kind of archaeological manner this concept of plasticity within Hegel, but then doesn't just kind of leave it, you know, uncovered and put it in a museum to be kind of, you know, looked at. She. She develops it and brings it to life and kind of makes it into a machine that. That goes on to change other things, etc. But that, for me is. Is kind of. Is a mode of, you know, the kind of the skill of the witness that she. She had to know where to look for it in Hegel, she had to know how to uncover it, how to develop it, etc. So, yeah, so I think, you know, that was really inspiring to me in terms of thinking about what this witnessing or this mode of witnessing could be. And then, you know, and so I was kind of looking for a way to think about this, to bring together the concept of witnessing and the concept of literature, film and narrative in relation to plasticity and that. And that's where I kind of brought in the work of Walter Benjamin and his famous essay the Storyteller. And I. Because I did this because for me, the figure of the storyteller is developed. In Walter Benjamin's essay, the storyteller is precisely kind of talking about how this figure of the storyteller or the witness kind of comes to be. So Walter Benjamin kind of talks about this kind of lost capacity for storytelling. And he says that we're living in a time when storytelling or the capacity to tell stories is disappearing, and we're living in an age of information where our storytellers have disappeared and we're no longer kind of having access to kind of stories that have within them these kind of deeper, embodied truths of humanity or deep history or things like that. And I really like the way in which Benjamin sets up the concept of the storyteller as someone who kind of does not, you know, the storyteller does not kind of create the story, but rather kind of borrows the story and takes responsibility for the story and has to kind of. He describes a storyteller as a kind of artisan that has to hone their craft and almost like a kind of. Yeah, like. Like a craft. A craftsperson. In their workshop, they have to work on. On. On how to hold the story and transmit the story in a way that doesn't appropriate the story, but takes care of it. You know, passes it on, protects it, shapes it, preserves it. You know, it has that kind of caretaker role to it. And for me, that was a really. It really opened up how I could think about the Witness in. In Malibu. So someone who hadn't the witness to plasticity as being someone who didn't invent plasticity from scratch or appropriate plasticity, you know, kind of putting their own fingerprints on it or completely controlling it, but rather someone who kind of takes care of plasticity or someone who bears witness to plasticity, brings it into their care and then kind of shapes the mode through which they can communicate this knowledge of plasticity to others. Yeah, So I really liked that evocation of the storyteller in Benjamin. And it kind of seemed like a good lens through which to articulate this aspect of witnessing.
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A
Yeah, wonderful. And, you know, really beautiful the way in which, you know, you describe how Malabu discovered and witnessed at the same time, plasticity in Hegel and then took it and developed it in a way that really brought it to light to reinterpret the things, but also the role of the storyteller. I was really fascinated as well by chapter one, the way you describe it and the role of the figure of the storyteller that will bring the skills, will bring the cultural the skills that they have to take care of these stories. And here I wanted to ask you about narrativity in Malibu's plasticity idea and how the storyteller develops this narrativity in a way, and how it all connects together.
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B
Yeah, well, okay, so this is interesting, I think. So. One thing that I also noticed about Malibu's work, I guess, is that it is kind of. It's alive with stories right from the start of it, really. And these are stories of transformation that come from all different areas. So everything from, you know, kind of Ovid's Metamorphoses and these kind of myths of fantastical transformations, like, you know, Daphne transforming into a tree and all of that kind of stuff all the way through to kind of photography and film and artworks, all of which tell the stories of transformation and plasticity in different ways. So Ontology of the Accident, for example, is Malibu's most storied work, I think, in a way, it kind of looks at types of transformations and examples of plasticity and destructive plasticity in Margaret Duras, in Proust, in Thomas Mann, but also in, you know, I think, Iris Murdoch's biography. And, you know, so really diverse examples. So stories are everywhere in Malibu, absolutely everywhere. But they hadn't necessarily been kind of thematized as such, I thought. And that's where I thought, okay, you know, this would be really interesting to do. But then, you know, I was also very inspired by the work of Christopher Watkin, who kind of hones in on the role of narrativity and narrative in Malibu as well. And Watkin looks at Malibu and kind of makes a similar observation, you know, that there are always kind of stories happening in Malibu. And Watkin actually uses the philosophy of Paul Ricoeur to look at Malibu's accounts of subjectivity and the ways in which people change through kind of plastic transformations and destructive plastic transformations. And he looks in particular, for example, you know, like, whose story is it when. When someone's Has a brain injury or something like that and they become unrecognizable? And he kind of develops this. This notion of kind of a. I think he calls it an. Well, it's a kind of ecological form of narrativity or something in which each subject becomes kind of like the product of many different narratives all at the same time. Because he looks at, you know, Malibu's work on Gage, for example, you know, who I talked about earlier, and he says, well, you know, there are. There's a story of Gage that Gage tells about himself, but Gage isn't just his own story of himself. He's also the kind of amalgamation or the web of stories that are told about Gage by everyone else around him as well. So, yeah. So Watkin also kind of uncovers that role of narrativity and narrative in Malibu and kind of agrees that it's a really central aspect of how she thinks about plasticity and how plasticity is always kind of necessarily involved in telling stories and telling its own stories. And yeah, that plastic life forms kind of. And I think this is what I write somewhere, that plastic life forms kind of always find a way to express themselves in a way. They're always kind of talking, as it. As it were. But the form that they're talking in doesn't always land upon a witness or something. And I guess that's where my figure of the witness comes in there. That plasticity is always talking in a way. It's telling its own stories, but maybe it has its own kind of languages or forms of speaking that aren't necessarily intelligible and that we need to develop the conditions for hearing those stories or being able to respond to them in a way. So I've talked a little bit about Benjamin's concept of the storyteller. And in the Storyteller, he makes this differentiation between the age of storytelling and then this age of information that he says has kind of superseded the age of storytelling. And we're now in this kind of slightly story poor era of information that is lacking in something. And so in thinking what kind of witnessing and what kind of stories literature and film tell about plasticity, I was thinking, okay, in what way do they. Do they tell stories about plasticity that is different to the stories that neuroscience tells about plasticity? For example? I don't think it's as simple as this binary, but can we look at kind of neuroscientific analyses of plasticity as more of an information of plasticity, whereas, you know, narratives, literature, film might be more the kind of storytellers of plasticity. And. And, you know, all of those things, the scientific and the literary and the filmic, they, they. They all kind of bring different forms of knowledge to plasticity and are therefore kind of, you know, all in that. In their different way, equally important witnesses of. Of plasticity to. To a certain degree. So, so, yeah, sorry, your question was on narrative, I guess, and its relationship to. To witnessing. And in. In that first chapter, I guess I wanted to tell the story, I guess, of how the witness develops in Malibu and how forms of storytelling develop in Malibu. As well. So I think I split the chapter into about three or four bits. Kind of like the early Malibu, in which Malibu is kind of. Kind of setting up her philosophy of plasticity, but also talking about her own personal experience as a philosopher and as a philosopher of plasticity. And then the second bit kind of talks about neuroplasticity and the role of narrative in Malibu's looking at the brain and neuroplastic narrativity. And then the final bit kind of looks at Malibu's more recent work on technology and anarchism and kind of collectivities, thinking more about kind of plural stories and the coming together of different storytellers and the webs of different stories, as Benjamin might say. And I think maybe that first section is the most important in terms of this connection to Benyamin or setting up the story of the Witness, the Witness or the Storyteller in Malibu, because kind of at that early stage in her writing on plasticity, she's producing, as I say, not just philosophical texts about plasticity in Hegel, for example, or Plasticity in Heidegger, but also texts about how she, as a philosopher, has engaged with her own work in this period. So she has a book called Plasticity at the Dusk of Writing, which I think came out in 2004, 2005. And this is basically a kind of intellectual autobiography. So Malibu is tracing how the concept of plasticity emerges and evolves throughout her own work. So throughout her book on Hegel, the book on Heidegger, and then into her work on neuroscience as well. And kind of. So in that, she's also theorizing herself and her own relationship to plasticity. And she talks about this. There's a section at the end of the new edition of Plasticity at the Dusk of Writing in which she talks about autobiographical plasticity and kind of talks about how she was not necessarily interested in talking about the I or talking about the self. She wants to be a kind of. Well, I interpret it as her kind of talking about how she wanted to witness plasticity or kind of put herself in a position in which she was able to kind of listen to or hear or see and then therefore tell the story of plasticity. So I guess, hopefully what comes through in that chapter is how plasticity in Malibu, for me, kind of evolves alongside a kind of secondary concept, which is the witness of plasticity, which is always there next to plasticity in Malibu's work. Kind of never too far behind or always the presence of the witness is always there looking at plasticity. Or finding ways to look at plasticity and finding ways to share that knowledge of plasticity as well.
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A
Absolutely. Yeah. And, you know, as you're explaining, I'm thinking that possibly. Right. The concept of the Witness itself, it's not a static one either. So then they kind of influence each other in a way that it's transformative. Because, as I understand from your chapter, then the Witness cannot be static in itself. Right. But, you know, you also mentioned the visuality of things. And that brings us to chapter two, Mutant Bodies and Moving Images in the Films of Leo's Carex Making Plasticity Appear. And, you know, I had many questions, but one of them was related to how you're theorizing the body's belonging, or lack thereof. Right. Within plastic worlds. And, you know, it's fascinating how the film as a visual medium would allow or not for plasticity to manifest directly as a concept or at the meta conceptual level. So, you know, like, just to put it simply, how are moving images plastic in and of themselves in this particular work of art? Right. By Leo Carex.
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B
Yeah, absolutely. And just to go back to what you were saying before so completely, the figure of the Witness is not an objective one or not. You know, the figure of Witness is not behind glass, so to speak. So I think that's a really interesting aspect of the Witness, as I see it in Malibu, is that the Witness is always, you know, the person who. Or the thing that agrees to witness plasticity or that enters into this witnessing of plasticity, kind of finds themselves mutating and transforming at the same time. So it's not possible to witness or bear witness properly to plasticity without realizing that you yourself are plastic and fragile and exposed to mutation and transformation. And to this kind of. Well, I would say threat or even kind of inevitability of destructive plastic metamorphosis. And so there's no way of bearing witness to plasticity without transforming yourself. So that is, you know, the Witnesses are very. Is. That's why it's kind of such an ethical responsibility or appears at the site of ethical responsibility in Malibu's work, I think, is because it is this kind of acceptance of one's own plasticity or acceptance to transform alongside the thing that you're bearing witness to as well. Yeah, because, I mean, Malibu says so the concept of alterity as well, is absolutely central to Malibu's exploration of plasticity. So for Malibu, you know, alterity isn't kind of this case of a kind of, you know, the alterity that we see in figures like Levinas, for example, in which the figure of the other is this completely other thing that can never be. Well, precisely. Can never be plastic or can never be, you know, is completely opposite and ungraspable, etc. Malibu has a very different kind of approach to alterity. And she sees alterity as being at the heart of plasticity, actually. So that alterity is at the heart of transformation. When we change, we're precisely allowing alterity to take shape within and transform within ourselves. So that's kind of. So Malibu plasticizers the idea of difference and the idea of alterity in that way. And that's central to this conceptualization of witnessing in that when you're witnessing the forms of alterity that appear within plastic transformation, you're necessarily also bearing witness to those forms of alterity that take shape within ourselves and within our own plastic transformations. So, yeah, that's. Thanks for bringing that up. That's absolutely central. And. Yeah, so your question was about the chapter two on Leos Carax and the question of belonging. And I guess I came to Leos Carax because it seemed to me that his work was very much a kind of an attempt to film, just film a transformation without any particular requirement for kind of narrative, you know, or. Or any narrative in the kind of linear sense. So the perfect example of this is Holy Motors, which is. I don't know whether you've seen it, but for anyone who hasn't seen it, it's. It's basically a film about a man called Monsieur Oscar. And he spends his entire day just changing into different characters. So it's very mysterious. You kind of learn that he's got this strange job in which he has to go to various different places and transform into someone or something. And then he gets back into a limousine, travels to a next place and does the same again. And there doesn't seem to be any kind of point to this. There's no distinct person who's making him do this. So it's really unclear why this is happening. And we never really know, actually. And ultimately, the film is also about kind of like the question of who is witnessing this. If the main character, Monsieur Oscar, is doing all of these performances and changing into all of these different characters, then who is it for who's witnessing this? And, you know. Yeah, so why is he doing that? And so I guess I took that film as a kind of central case study within the cinema of Leos Kerax, as kind of a kind of pure view onto, or a pure witnessing of plasticity, really. A Pure experiment in what does it mean for a body to change constantly. And I read that film in Katax alongside Malibu's work on Heidegger in her book the Heidegger Change, which I think is the most. One of the most interesting books from Malibu, but also one of the. The most difficult to grasp because the book is kind of written in the form of that. That it's trying to communicate, which is like this experience of complete shifting grounds at all times. Malibu is trying to kind of give the portrait of a universe that is nothing but plasticity. There's. There's no stable area from which to, to stand and view. You know, everything is like lava or it's molten. Like everything is completely changing at all times. And, and that's very much the experience that I get from Leos Carax, particularly Holy Motors. Everything is always in movement. The ground's always shifting. The, the. The environments are always morphing into each other bodies. You know, you don't know who they are. They never have a stable identity. They're always changing. And, and there's no identity beneath these performances. The, the body is always within a kind of a change or a performance without there ever being a kind of stable anchor beneath. And so, yeah, the question of belonging within, within that chapter is central as well because. Yeah, because I guess the question is if everything is changing all the time, if, if our identities are always changing and if there's no mutable grounds to kind of stand on, there's no static site to kind of take shelter in, you know, where. Who are we and where. Where do we belong within that world, basically. And I was very inspired in that chapter by a chapter written by Thomas Wormalt on, on Malibu in which he talks about this. This question of belonging in Malibu. And he kind of focuses on these words that Malibu uses. The habitue and the inhabitur, the people that are, you know, habitually connected to things or they've, you know, or habit has allowed them to form a kind of identity, etc. And so, yeah, that's 100% at the form of the heart of that chapter. This. How does Carax use cinema to explore this kind of vertigo of being a plastic person or a plastic identity or a plastic being within a world that is also constantly shifting and plastic and mutable as well. And I think what also led me to think of that, to think Carax was the perfect person to kind of explore that through, is that Malibu's work on Heidegger and the Heidegger change is also very much kind of concerned with appearance and with vision and also with what she calls the cineplastic. So she gains the term cineplasticity or the cineplastic from Elie Thor, who kind of writes about how cinema, who's kind of an art critic, who's writing about how cinema is. Is a plastic art and kind of talks about their. Their experience of looking at images of lava flowing down the side of an erupting volcano. I think it's Mount Etna, and how that this is a kind of pure view of forms and movements and that there's no narrative, there's no story. It's literally just an image of complete lava just changing forms at any one time. And so, yeah, so it's kind of all kind of. It's a big mix, really, in that chapter, because there's Malibu, who's thinking about kind of like this vertiginous experience of plasticity and moving grounds in the Heidegger change, in which there is nothing but transformation in the world. There is, you know, the static doesn't really exist or is just a kind of a false stasis that we impose perhaps onto movement and change. But then also how she looks at that through kind of what is its base, a thinking of cinema and the image and how images transform. And then Carax, who, in works such as the Holy Motors, kind of is purely thinking about what does it mean to use images to try and bear witness to the transformability of bodies and nothing but. But the transformability of bodies.
- [49:05]
A
I am still holding on to the word vertigo here because it's indeed something very almost anxiety, ontological anxiety inducing in a way, but fascinating. Absolutely. It brings almost affects into conversation about it in the background. But that's a conversation, I think, for the next book, maybe, because I also wanted to bring it back to literature, actually. And chapters three, writing Mutation in the Novels and the Theater of Marie Dariusek, Science as a Witness to Plasticity. And here the chapter proposes a discovery of the ways in which scientific discourses of plasticity participate in, sometimes inform, sometimes resonate with corporeal and neural transformations. But I was really interested in the theater. Like, how does theater literature kind of connect to science in a way that Malabu makes it visible, but then it's materialized, actually. By Marie Darjiusek.
- [50:22]
B
Yeah, absolutely. So Marie Dariusek, I think, you know, again, how not to write about Marie Dariusek when you're looking at Malibu and transformation, because, I mean, Marie Darius Sec's whole career begins with this novel called Pigtails or Trisme in the original French, which is a novel about a woman who one day, for absolutely no reason and without any logic, begins turning into a pig. And the whole book is told from the perspective of this woman, and it's her kind of shock and suffering, but also pleasure and transformation in response to this kind of crazy thing that is happening to her. And so kind of Darius, like's whole career, I think, has kind of been understood through this primary shock of this really punk, violent novel about transformation and about the transformation that comes from absolutely nowhere. And, you know, Darius Secker's been compared to Kafka and, you know, all of those. And Ovid and, you know, all of those other kind of big thinkers of. And writers of transformation. And what's really interesting about that book as well is it's not just. It's not sold from the third person, it's someone witnessing their transformation from within as well, in a really exciting way. So anyone who has not read that book, I recommend it 100%. But I think, you know, right from the start, what's interesting about Mary Darya Sec is she doesn't kind of remain within the kind of purely kind of, you know, almost the mythological register when she's thinking about transformation. But you know, that that transformation of the woman into a pig in that first novel, even then, you know, you can see that there's a kind of keen interest in scientific discourses within how Darius explores that, you know, when the woman is turning into a pig, there's this kind of section where she's thinking about what's happening in her brain and the ways in which her neurons are firing and the ways in which kind of her body at a cellular level is changing. And Daria Sech has spoken about how science is kind of not just an objective kind of field of data that she becomes inspired by in her work, but is also a critical and kind of creative source of ideas and experimental tools for her as well in her writing. And she's talked in interviews as well about how she's kind of. She's married to a scientist and, you know, she's always kind of in dialogue with these different discourses of science. So I kind of wanted to explore the ways in which kind of maridaria sex writing kind of hybridises itself with these scientific discourses and kind of plasticizes those discourses of scientific discourses of plasticity as well. And yeah, so thank you for asking about the theatre section of that chapter, because. So Malibu has a play called Le Musee de la Mer, which means the museum of the sea, or the Sea Museum or the Maritime Museum. And I think it's one of her most exciting works, but it's also one of her more underexplored works, I would say. You know, it's a really difficult text. It's written without barely any stage directions. You know, it's written with lots of gaps in the text. You know, it's very much open to interpretation. And it's basically the story of a family who own a kind of maritime museum that has all sorts of kind of strange sea creatures living within it. And they're existing in this kind of post apocalyptic landscape where, you know, there's some sort of war going on and they're kind of hiding in the museum and they're ultimately having to eat their fish because those are the kind of last bits of food that they've got left. But there's this character called Bella in the play, and Bella is. Well, she's described in the work as antruch, which literally means like a thing or un chose, which also means kind of just like a thing or. So Bella is like this undescribed, I guess she's an animal. She's not human in any case, but we don't really know what she is. And she communicates through the piece only through kind of squawks and these different noises that she makes. So she's kind of there, but in a kind of photographic negative within the text itself. And then within the performance of the play by Arthur Nausiciel in Iceland, where it was, I think, believe that was the first performance. Bella was interpreted or played by a dancer and choreographer called Damien Geller, who kind of wore this big plastic sack to kind of obscure any human form underneath. And you know, there's kind of wet water dripping off this plastic sack, et cetera. So I was interesting, I mean, to think about theatre allows us to think about witnessing in a very kind of straightforward way as well. You know, what does it mean to not just be reading this text, but to be physically a member of an audience among other audience members who are all witnessing this at the same time. What kind of collectivity is that? And then what responsibility do the actors or the dancers who are interpreting this as well have in terms of the witnessing of plasticity there? So, yeah, I think that was one of the hardest bits of the book to write, but also one of the most like, mysterious and intriguing parts for me to write as well. Spring just hits different one day, cold mud, the next, warm sunshine. But the hard working men and Women in Carhartt don't wait for the first forecast to get to work hatching roads, clearing trails, planting crops. Their hands turn this season's uncertainty into possibility. So get out there, spring into action. We've got you covered for whatever the season throws your way.
- [57:03]
A
Carhartt made possible Expedia and visit Scotland. Invite you to come step into centuries of history that await inspired Scotland. Castles steeped in legend Walk along cobblestone streets. Come share the warmth of stories passed down through generations. This is a place with a past that is fully present today and all yours to explore. Plan your Scottish escape today@expedia.com VisitScotland it's definitely intriguing, for sure. And I mean, from reading the book and specifically chapter three, I wouldn't. I didn't sense the hardship. It was more the beauty of discovering these things and, you know, you putting them. Them forward in a way that. That makes sense and in a way that. That brings out concepts and this hybridity, I would say. So, you know, it's. If you wouldn't have mentioned the hardship, I think nobody would have known. But, you know, it's. It's definitely something that I think all of our listeners could. Could, you know, gain from, from reading and from also seeing. Right. The theater, if possible. I'm not sure if there are more performances or if it's a, you know, recurring thing or. Do you think it's more of an art house kind of.
- [58:28]
B
That's really interesting. I'm not sure. I'm not sure if there'll be more performance of it, performances of it. I know that there was a documentary made of the making of the play, which is really hard to find. I really struggled to get hold of it, but finally I did find it somewhere. But now the memory of how I managed to get to it as from me as well. But it's out there. There is a documentary made about the making of it that. And you. If you look online, I think on Mary Darius X own website as well, there are images of it. So you can see these like, incredible images of kind of Damien Jalet as Bella in this plastic costume with kind of these huge inflatable backgrounds and this kind of wet plastic floor as well underneath as well. So, yeah, I would encourage anyone listening to go and have a look at some images of that particular production by Artur Nausiciel in Iceland. But yeah, I hope it gets performed again. Definitely.
- [59:29]
A
I hope so too. I would really like to see it, you know, but. And the theater world is, you know, quite. There's A lot of experiment. I really hope, you know, it gets recasted and, you know, that brings us not necessarily back, but, you know, we're still hovering around this idea of destructive plasticity. And, you know, in chapter four, we're looking at transforming indifferences and, you know, this idea that the plasticity explodes and, you know, it might enable more radical forms. So I was just intrigued by the idea of. Of the explosion as. I mean, you get the idea of the radical and the radicality of it, but just how these almost unseen transformations and in plasticity would. Would get to the point of explosion and how marine die, I might be mispronouncing it, conceptualizes the act of destruction.
- [60:33]
B
Yeah, Well, I think destructive plasticity is so central to Malibu's philosophy. It's been there right from the beginning. Even if you read the Future of Hegel, there's bits where she talks about the kind of plastic materiality of the world that is, you know, constructed, constructive and destructive. And, you know, there's the figure of the atomic bomb there. And, you know, the. The very first definition that Malibu gives of plasticity is. Well, she doesn't give one singular definition precisely, but she says, look, there are. There have been all of these different ways of understanding plasticity. And it's not just about that constructive plastic arts kind of aesthetic sense of plasticity, of just being constructive or beautiful or voluntary even. But there's also that other destructive side to it that we can hear in words like, you know, the French words for bombing, plastique and plasticage, and in German, the plastikbombe, the, you know, the plastic bomb. And so right from the beginning, she sees plasticity as having these almost antithetical but simultaneous activities. So plasticity is at once something that is creative and formative, and it gives and receives form, as she says, but it also annihilates form at the same time. So, you know, I very much think that destructive plasticity in Malibu, it's not the exception to the rule. You know, destructive plasticity is at the heart of plasticity. It's always working in tension with plasticity's constructive elements. And it is constructive in its own way as well. When something explodes, it's not the annihilation of form or you don't get the absence of form after that. You precisely get a form of annihilation or a form of destruction, which Malibu shows in so many different ways, is a form in and of itself. That is a form that we need to recognize as a form and that we need to look for and that we need to take seriously as a form. And I think, you know, that that finding is particularly poignant precisely when you think of Malibu's work on. On the Brain and Human Vulnerability and, you know, the. The ways in which we fail to. To kind of recognize forms of destructive plasticity precisely as forms of subjectivity in and of the. Themselves. You know, in ontology of the accident, Malibu says, you know, a destroyed or deconstructed psyche remains a psyche. You know, an exploded brain or an injured brain remains a brain, you know, so anyway, I wanted to explore. I wanted to dedicate a chapter to destructive plasticity, even though destructive plasticity comes through in the other chapters in. In different ways. And I mean, the work of Marie Ndi I just found so, like, spellbinding when. Like, when I first read it. I can't remember when I first read it, but. Or whether I first read it before Malibu or just after. I can't quite remember, but, I mean, Marianne Di. Her work is so intriguing because it describes these worlds that are kind of devoid of affect somehow. You know, people and characters in these works are, you know, often unrecognizable or you don't know their name or they've. Or they've changed slightly, and it's uncanny. And you don't know whether it's still them or not. And then also, these worlds are kind of accompanied by this, like, emotionlessness, or at least they're not accompanied by the forms of affect you might expect in certain situations. So she's got one of her most famous books that I talk about here is a book called Autoportray en ver Self Portrait in Green. And it's the. Again, it's told in the first person, and it's this strange story in which the narrator is kind of talking about her life and she talks about these kind of strange spectral figures called the Women in Green. And we never really know who these women are. And, you know, one of them is her mother, but it's kind of felt that one of them is herself as well. And then one of them is this other woman who she believes that she witnesses trying to kill herself. Anyway, there are some amazing scenes in this book. And in one of the scenes, the narrator is. Is she's just dropped her children off at school and she sees another woman walking towards her. And she looks at this woman and says. And then there was my friend Christina walking towards me. Or at least she thinks it's her friend Christina. So there's this eerie, eerie kind of unfamiliarity in which you're not sure why she can't recognize her friend or not. And then part of the way through the conversation, she realizes that it isn't Christina. In fact, it's someone else who perhaps, like, looks like Christina or. But anyway, there's this weird slippage, and you. You don't know why this is occurring and, and, and how it is that this person might not be recognizable. And again, we kind of feel the vertigo of. Of this kind of absence of affect and absence of. Of, you know, recognizable faces or recognisable people. I think, you know, affect and the destruction of affect is central to Malibu's understanding of destructive plasticity as well. And when she talks about the kinds of destructive plasticity that she sees in the human brain, for example, in brain injury, she talks about how often, following particular types of brain injury, there can be a kind of flatness of affect. And particularly when kind of the areas of the brain that deal with emotional responses and emotional regulation are affected and the person can kind of exhibit a very flat or indifferent kind of affect. So, yeah, I wanted to kind of show how for Malibu kind of, you know, because a lot of people have criticized Malibu and said, well, you know, you know, Malibu kind of tars all brain injuries with the same brush when she says that. Or she, you know, this risks kind of reducing the specificities of all brain injuries, et cetera. But. And I think some of those are good critiques and really important challenges. But I also wanted to bring out ways in which Malibu, when she kind of looks at the flat affect or the destruction of affect, not just in brain injuries, but kind of beyond that as well, in literary and filmic examples, that flatness of affect is not the end of the story, so to speak. It's not the end of identity. It's not the end of subjectivity. It's not death. It's precisely the beginning of something different, the beginning of a completely new form of life that does not kind of have to fit within these kind of effective structures that we might expect or kind of express itself via those effective registers, basically. And this, for me, is exactly what Marie Ndi's work is so incredible in exploring.
- [68:18]
A
I'm looking forward to reading Self Portrait in Green, actually. I ordered it. But I'm also thinking that it's also what seems to be coming out of the chapter, but also in larger terms. It's almost the search for vocabulary or a way to recognize that the structures that exist function but not function at the same time, and that we should recognize affect or transformation beyond the silos that we have. So I think, I'm sure the novel and the other films that are mentioned in the book are going to help our readers and myself included, to see these transformations better and how going beyond the structures that we've been socialized to use can actually be very, very productive.
- [69:20]
B
Oh, absolutely. I think it really speaks to that element of Malibu that, you know, like as I say, a psyche that is damaged is still a psyche. You know, just because something or someone doesn't speak in the language, the effective language, or any other form of language that we might expect to tell of their transformation does not mean that they're not expressing that transformation. And I think in Malibu, precisely when there is a destruction of affect or an absence of affecting, that is not a symptom that nothing has happened or nothing is going to happen, but precisely a symptom of the fact that one of the most radical metamorphoses has occurred and that transformation is also yet to occur as well. So just to quickly on that, in Malibu's first book, the Future of Hegel, she has this bit towards the end of the book where she talks about landscapes of saturation and vacancy that are both completely saturated and completely vacant at the same time. And I don't know the exact quote, but she talks about a landscape in which everything has already happened and everything is still to happen as well. And that's the radicality of the event that she's describing with destructive plasticity. Everything's happened in terms of the fact that, you know, that prior subjectivity or identity has been completely, radically metamorphosed or erased even in some way, but everything is still to happen in that this is a new form of, you know, this is a complete shift in life. New events will now occur, new forms of life have emerged, new forms of subjectivity and identity have emerged here. So it's almost chilling in Malibu, that phrase, right, like saturation and vacancy. And that's so much what's at stake in ndi, I think.
- [71:20]
A
Yeah, I'm starting to see it. And I think it brings up the question of politics, actually. And we kind of see that in chapter five, Queer Plasticity in the films and writing of Alain Giraudi. Ecology, pleasure, anarchy. That brings up this idea of non governable modes of being, right, that as you mentioned on page 12, quote, are intrinsically indifferent to domination and control, end of quote. So, you know, just, you know, it might be a very simple question, but I just wanted to ask you to tell us a bit more about how that looks like how Is the queer body right, represented in a way that it can escape being governed?
- [72:04]
B
Yeah. So with my final chapter, I guess I wanted to. I really wanted to engage with Malibu's more recent work in which she's moving away from an explicit focus on plasticity and moving into writing about different political formations. And she's particularly interested in anarchism and kind of forms of political resistance that anarchism can propose. And what I find interesting about Malibu's work on anarchism, or at least one of the things that I find interesting, is the kind of images of kind of, you know, ecologies and environments and of the natural world that seem to go hand in hand with her analysis of anarchism and indeed are very present in some of the key figures that, you know, and kind of key political thinkers and philosophers of anarchism that she looks at, like Kropotkin, for example, and these kind of forms of. Or expressions of mutual aid that are looking at the animal world and looking at ways in which animals, you know, we shouldn't conceptualise nature or non human landscapes as kind of just the survival of the fittest. You know, the Darwinian conception of competition or things that are against each other or in competition always, but rather look at the non human world, or ecologies more generally, as things that often work together, that propose kind of modes of mutual aid that go completely against this idea of competition, et cetera. Yeah. And also this is connected, I think, with questions of gender, sexuality and queerness in Malibu as well. So we've got this kind of triangle emerging already of anarchism on the one prong of the triangle, ecologies and the natural, whatever that means, on another prong of the triangle. And then the third prong of the triangle would be the kind of gender, sexuality and queer experiences, I would say. And, you know, these come to light in Malibu in different books. So Malibu's first work on gender, I guess, would be. Or in which gender plays a big role, would be changing. Different changes from 2009, in which Malibu talks quite autobiographically about what it means to her to be a woman philosopher. And that's, again, I won't go into it now, but that's very much to do with narrative as well and storytelling. I mentioned this a little bit before when we were talking about chapter one, but Malibu kind of says how as an early philosopher, or. Sorry, earlier in her career as a philosopher, she was kind of taught to. Or she felt under pressure to kind of masculinise her philosophy and to kind of erase emotion from it. Or erase narrative and storytelling from it. That managed to resist that in different ways, including in writing Changing Difference, in which she brings precisely her kind of autobiographical self into the work as well. But then kind of later books like Pleasure Erased, which is more recent, which kind of talks about pleasure, obviously, you know, erotic pleasure and otherwise Malibu kind of establishes the clitoris in particular as a kind of symbol of anarchy, of kind of bodily anarchy. A kind of an example of a sight on the body that is built for pleasure in a way that doesn't have to respond to the law of the phallus. You know, it can gain pleasure without having to engage with the phallus in all of its many discourse, you know, discursive forms or physical forms at all. And then, you know, so. And those are also about anarchy as well. So you can see how the book on the clitoris is about anarchy, but it's also about sexuality. It's also about the body, and it's about, you know, it engages also kind of in a really interesting way with queer theory and kind of questions of kind of, you know, bodily limitations, but also bodily transformations and emancipations. And, you know, so I wanted to kind of explore this precisely through the works of Alain Guiraudi, who is a contemporary queer French filmmaker who is very well known for his film Stranger by the Lake, which is all about a cruising site in the south of France in which it's kind of like a Hitchcockian who. Who done it. Murder. That just kind of happen. It's also, you know, everyone in that film is nude at all times. So it's kind of a nudist beach Hitchcock murder mystery film. I really recommend it. It's absolutely brilliant. But kind of. Giroudi approaches questions of queerness and the queer body not within urban environments, as is so often the case in kind of queer representation. You know, we see, you know, kind of queerness kind of related to kind of the queer politics of, I don't know, nightlife or city environments, et cetera. But Giroudi's queerness is all about Southern French rural landscapes. You know, Stranger by the Lake. You don't see a single house in it. It's precisely based in a forest and a lake and a beach, and that's the kind of scenery that it's based in. So you've got that connection between queerness and the natural environment and the rural. But you also have this element of kind of political collectivity or mobilization or what does it mean to be a community in the works of alangirhudi, because, for example, you know, Stranger by the Lake happens, as I said, a cruising site in which it's kind of a completely self governed kind of site of people kind of negotiating this landscape and this space, you know, without any form of kind of external governing power. Although there is a kind of. There is this kind of figure of the police chief that is also kind of threatening that in, well, threatening it in some ways in some of other of Giroudi's works, but in an interesting way in this one. Anyway, I won't go into that, but yeah, so that's the intersection that I wanted to look at kind of anarchic forms of community and coming together that cannot be dominated and the link between that and queerness and the queer body, but not just the queer human body, but also kind of queerness as read into nature and ecologies. And you know, so much of Alan Giroudi's filmmaking is not about the human bodies of the protagonist, but there are so many really fascinating moments where the camera kind of forgets to follow the human protagonist and dwells on, you know, the tree for a little bit or dwells on the sound that the water's making on a rock or something like that, or the animal in different ways. Yeah, so. And Gihodi is full of humor and playfulness and joyfulness as well, as well as these kind of darker elements of the threat of violence at all times. And his kind of queer landscapes are at once kind of Edenic and utopian and completely dystopian. And again, there's an element of that saturation and vacancy and what has already happened and what is still to happen. And it seemed like the perfect way to kind of end the book. On that note.
- [80:09]
A
Yeah, I would agree. And I think there's so much more richness to, to be explored from, from these works. And also, I mean, I have many more questions about the book, your own, but you know, just in the interest of, of, you know, the, the listening in the podcast, I was wondering whether there are any elements that might have escaped the conversation, but they're important points that you think the, the listeners should know about.
- [80:34]
B
Oh, that's a really good question. Well, I think that what I should say, and hopefully this comes through in the conclusion, is that I'm not arguing in the book for kind of one form of witnessing plasticity over others. I think the main argument that kind of comes out towards the end is that plasticity requires precisely multiple witnesses. So, you know, scientific discourses of plasticity are really important that, you know, Malibu says, as herself, that neuroscience, the neuroscientific discovery of brain plasticity was and remains today, a revolution in the way that we continue to think of ourselves as human and our futures as humans on the planet. You know, so, you know, it completely shook everything up. But alongside science, we need other witnesses of plasticity as well. We need philosophical witnesses of plasticity. We need literary witnesses of plasticity. We need filmic witnesses of plasticity. And kind of my conclusion is it wants to say that, but it also wants to invite other ways of thinking, other ways of witnessing plasticity to come to the fore as well. You know, the book focuses on philosophy, literature and film, but there are so many other ways, other modes of witnessing plasticity. So I really. That's my hope for the book is that it will start a conversation on ways of witnessing plasticity, ways in which different polyphonic forms of witnessing plasticity can come together. So, you know, we need theatrical plasticity and, you know, performers of plasticity to engage with neuroscientists of plasticity to engage with writers of plasticity, filmmakers of plasticity. And we need to keep doing that and keep inventing new ways of bearing witness to plasticity that precisely don't try and harness plasticity or instrumentalize plasticity in the way that we're so used to doing in the world. Trying to harness the things that the body can do in order to kind of make it work for us in some way or to make it profitable. Or, you know, are precisely forms of witnessing plasticity that allow us to allow plasticity itself to change and transform and transmute without trying to control it too much. And, you know, Malibu, one thing that I haven't said, but it's very important element of Malibu's plasticity is that she says right at the beginning, plasticity is itself plastic. If everything in the world necessarily is plastic and mutable and transformable, then plasticity is no exception to that. Plasticity itself changes, transforms, multiplies. Even, I would argue, throughout Malibu's work and throughout discourses of plasticity in the world, I would say. And one of the most beautiful elements of. Or beautiful lines, I think, in Malibu's work is a line in Changing Difference where she says, you know, one day, plasticity. Again, I'm not, You know, I'm. I'm. This isn't word for word, but I'm just trying to remember it. Plasticity will one day change so much that it won't be plasticity anymore. You know, plasticity. The forms of plasticity will have their day. At one point, you know, they'll be done or they'll be no longer recognizable as plasticity. So, yeah, inventing and finding new forms of witnessing plasticity that brings together polyphonic diverse forms of witnessing it in order to precisely allow plasticity its freedom, to allow plasticity to not be instrumentalized or captured and to allow plasticity it's freedom and whatever that looks like, I guess. Yeah, that's ambiguous that. That final note and I'll need to think about it. But.
- [84:46]
A
Yeah, well, it, you know, it brings us back to. To the philosophy of it. Right. And to. To not having this definite, you know, very rigid answer, but more, you know, the continuation of the transformation and, you know, going, going with it and in different forms and different vocabularies and different forms of connection, I guess, in more of a network, I guess, of transformations than just a strict category. But we have taken a lot of your time. So the last question I have is just I'm wondering about your current projects and what you're engaging with at the moment.
- [85:27]
B
Yeah, well, so it sounds like my current project is very different, but I think it's. It actually flows on in quite an organic way in that my. My current project, I mean, I'm very much within the kind of medical and health humanities, and my research looks in particular now at kind of clinical environments and hospitals and, and the ways in which, again, the arts and humanities, literature, film, philosophy, et cetera, can help us to think about hospital futures. I think a lot of people would agree that, you know, our current hospitals are not the most. And I mean this in terms of hospitals across the globe. Right. I know, you know, hospitals are often not the most joyful places. Their environments are often not what we might imagine as being conducive to healing or to, you know, kind of. I don't know. Yeah. Kind of facing and dealing with the. With everything that comes with sickness and ill health, but also all of those other things that go on in hospitals like birth and death and everything and transformation, of course. And I think, you know, I originally started kind of thinking about this precisely in relation to Malibu. So I wrote an article in 2021 about Malibu and the Plastic Hospital or the Plastic Clinic and kind of trying to think about how clinical space or the environments of health care play a role also within Malibu's work. I mean, when she talks about her grandmother and her grandmother's Alzheimer's, she. She. She kind of imagines the clinical environment in which her grandmother was in and kind of talks about how she would have. Rather than kind of having a clinical environment that tried to restore her grandmother to a prior state or a prior identity, she'd have rather an environment that helped her grandmother to kind of come to terms with her own transformation, her own absence, which I think is a really poignant, powerful challenge to healthcare architecture. How do we build architectures that allow for and let be and kind of, you know, protect and care for transformation in that way, rather than kind of, you know, fighting to get things, to restore things back to a certain perceived norm or something like that? So, yeah, that is my current project. Been thinking about that for about five years now. But I'm increasingly working with kind of hospital architects and designers and other people working on hospitals in medical anthropology. And yeah, it's a really, I'm really, really excited about it and I'm really enjoying it. So, yeah, thanks for that question.
- [88:19]
A
Oh, absolutely. And I think they're, yeah, they're definitely, you know, I guess, transatlantic connections that could be, could be made in that sense. And, you know, with. On that very enthusiastic note, I'm going to thank you very, very much for talking to us today and I can't wait to read the output from, from the new project.
- [88:40]
B
Thank you so much. Honestly, I've enjoyed this so much. Victoria, thanks so much for getting in touch and inviting me. I really enjoyed this and yeah, appreciate it.
- [88:49]
A
Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you for listening to this episode of the New Books Network. We are an academic podcast network with the mission of public education. If you liked this episode, please share it with a friend and rate us on your preferred podcast platform. You can browse all of our episodes on our website newbooksnetwork.com Connect with us on Instagram and Blue sky with the handle ewbooksnetwork and subscribe to our weekly Substack newsletter at newbooksnetwork.substack.com to get episode recommendations straight to your inbox.
- [89:32]
B
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