Philosophy of change in Catherine Malabou and in Martin Heidegger: The fantastic of childhood or the childhood of the fantastic

Abstract

This paper is concerned with Catherine Malabou’s reading of Heidegger’s forgotten triad of change; indeed, in connection to her own notion of the ‘plasticity of meaning’. The paper focuses on the emergence of meaning, on its figuration, and on the moment during which a new image of meaning comes to be seen. In light of this pursuit, the paper will attest to change and to the plasticity of meaning through different images; the first being the plasticity of reading; the second, the plasticity of metaphysics; and third, the plasticity of the ‘motor scheme’ – and especially that of writing. All these cases will be tied together through the notion of the fantastic; namely, through that which instantiates the figuration of meaning, its formation into an image and its visibility. After considering these plastic instances – and revealing some unimagined aspects of the fantastic, like the process of material-metaphoricity, I will relate the plasticity of meaning to the notion of childhood and to the ways through which this notion can be reconfigured.