Catherine Malabou (born 1959) is a graduate of Ecole Normale Supérieure at
Fontenay-Saint-Cloud, with the agregation and doctorate in Philosophy
under the direction of Jacques Derrida at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences
Sociales. She is currently “maîtrede conferences” at
the Université Paris-X Nanterre, in the department of Philosophy founded by Paul
Ricoeur and whose emeriti include Emmanuel Levinas and Michel Dufrenne. Specializing in
the relation of dialectics to deconstruction, she is the author of L'Avenir de Hegel:
Plasticité,Temporalité, Dialectique (Paris, Vrin, 1996),
forthcoming in English translation by Routledge UK); and with Jacques Derrida La
Contre-allée (La Quinzaine Littéraire-Louis Vuitton, 1999), forthcoming in English
translation by Stanford University Press, and of numerous articles on Hegel and
contemporary French Philosophy, such as “Who’s Afraid of Hegelian Wolves”
in Deleuze: A Critical Reader, edited by Paul Patton (Blackwell, 1996) and she has edited
the special issue of the Revue Philosophique on Jacques Derrida (1990, no. 1).
She is currently working on two books both dedicated to the relationship between
negativity and transformation. The first one will deal with Heidegger’s thought of
mutation and change. The second one will organize a dialogue between Hegel and Freud on
refusal, negation, denegation and death. The concept of “plasticity,” discovered
in Hegel’s work, will continue to be the master word of this new research. ». Her
paper will concern the question the plastic gesture of writing a confession, which does
not only concern style, but the philosophical act of shaping or forming an "I."
