La plasticità delle forme: Catherine Malabou e la configurazione plastica fra trasformazione e distruzione

Abstract

In the volume “Avant demain. Épigenèse et rationalité” the French thinker Catherine Malabou states that every kind of form (artistic, biological, but also conceptual form) emerges through epigenesis, a term borrowed from the natural sciences. In other words, forms “become” because each of them acquires its configuration gradually and progressively through incorporations, modifications and adaptations, processes inscribed, according to the author, within the so-called paradigm of the “plasticity of forms”. If, however, any form is constructed through epigenesis, then the concept of plasticity does not escape this view either: it emerges progressively during philosophical thought, incorporating accidental events that, as we will attempt to highlight in the course of this article, contribute to its very definition. Our aim, therefore, is to grasp the conceptual path of plasticity, a term that, deriving from the Greek expression πλαστική τέχνη (plastic art), proves to be central to the aesthetic understanding of forms.