Contact [email protected] for details The Evidence of Plasticity: A Workshop with Catherine Malabou Durham University, Williams Room, St Chad’s, 14.00-18.00, January 26th, 2016 Le Monde for © Gunther von Hagens © BODY WORLDS, InsCtute for PlasCnaCon, Heidelberg, Germany GUILLAUME DARRIBAU/FRACTURES 14.00-16.30 – ‘The Place of the Void’, Ian James (Cambridge); ‘A Plastic Reading of the 17th Century’, Maria El-Turk (Durham); ‘Brains, Pills and Dildos: Neuroplasticity, Pharmacology and Prosthetics’, Sofia Hewson (Cambridge); ‘Philosophy, Plasticity and “History as the History of Addictions”’, Gerald Moore (Durham). 16.45-18.00 – ‘Annihilation without a trace?’ Roundtable on the evidence of plasticity, led by Catherine Malabou. Prof. Catherine Malabou ! (CRMEP, Kingston University)" " 27th January 2016, 19:30, ! Great Hall, Durham Castle! ! ‘The Anthropocene: A New History’" " Outline: I will interrogate the notion of ‘Anthropocene’ as a specific temporal determination situated at the boarder of nature and history. The Anthropocene is both a geological era and a historical moment. Clearly, such a phenomenon requires a new concept of history, in which nature plays a central role and ceases to be the eternal recurrence of the identical to become a genuine source of events. A phenomenon like global warming can thus be analysed as a historical turn of nature. New notions like deep history, negative universal history, neurohistory, are currently used by historians, theoreticians of environment and evolutionary biologists. I will propose a philosophical approach to these new determinations. ! Biography: Malabou graduated from the École Normale Supérieure Lettres et Sciences Humaines (Fontenay- Saint-Cloud). Her agrégation and doctorate were obtained, under the supervision of Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Marion, from the École des hautes études en sciences sociales. Her dissertation became the book, L'Avenir de Hegel: Plasticité, Temporalité, Dialectique (1996). Central to Malabou's philosophy is the concept of ‘plasticity’, which she derives in part from the work of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and from medical science, for example, from work on stem cells and from the concept of neuroplasticity. Malabou is preparing a new book on the political meaning of life in the light of the most recent biological discoveries. This work will discuss Giorgio Agamben's concept of ‘bare life’ and Michel Foucault's notion of biopower, underscoring the lack of scientific biological definitions of these terms, and the political meaning of such a lack.! " This lecture is free, and open to all. No tickets or registration are required. Seats are allocated on a first-come, first-served basis.! ! Contact [email protected] for more information about this event.!.