Tyler M. Williams: You are often presented as a philosopher ‘of ‘ neuroscience, or at least more generally a philosopher ‘of ‘ science, since your work is so devoted to bridging the historical gap that continental philosophers have maintained between the philosophical and the scientific. Plasticity provides you precisely such a bridge, as you elaborate in your many books, essays, lectures and interviews. Despite the fact that neuroplasticity takes up significant portions of your attention, the range of approaches to the concept of plasticity exhibited in Plasticity: The Promise of Explosion shows that it is erroneous to equate ‘plasticity’ solely with its neurological – or even its scientific – dimensions. Plasticity is, after all, as you say in Plasticity at the Dusk of Writing, a ‘motor scheme’ for a new era of philosophy. But this raises a question of exemplarity. How exactly do you situate ‘plasticity’ in your work? Is the brain an example, one example among others, of plasticity? Or is the exemplarity of neuroplasticity inseparable from plasticity?

Catherine Malabou: This is a very interesting and difficult question. First of all, no, I do not identify myself as a philosopher of science because philosophy of science is a specialisation I do not have. Plasticity only makes sense because of its plurality – of fields, of meanings, and of empirical occurrences. Regarding neuroscience, I would say that what I do is bring to light the philosophical impact of neuroscience, which is not the same thing as building a philosophy of neuroscience. For a long time, contemporary neuroscience and contemporary philosophy ignored each other and, as a result, the brain never became a philosophical object comparable to the mind, the spirit or the soul. What was important for me was to dig out the importance of the brain for understanding contemporary subjectivities, contemporary identities, selves, etc. It occurred to me that it was no longer possible to act as if the most recent research in neurology and the most recent definitions of the brain had no impact on our way of thinking – particularly in critical theory. But, of course, this does not mean that I define myself as a specialist in neuroscience.

Now, regarding your question about plasticity and how I situate it among its many meanings and empirical occurrences: one of my main tasks is to find a way between three main philosophical directions.