‘Plastic truth’ after Catherine Malabou. Truth, life, and education

Abstract

What form might truth take in a theoretical frame which precludes notions of origin and telos? Catherine Malabou’s theory of ‘plasticity’ is such a frame, as it takes the accumulation of life and not the search for eternal truths to be a central premise of philosophy. I conduct a close reading of central texts of Malabou’s to conceptualise truth as a plastic phenomenon over three stages: conception, gestation, and nativity. The conception of truth involves its coming-into-shape; gestation its consolidation of shape; nativity the precariousness of being alive. ‘Plastic truth’ represents a meeting of negotiations, accidents, history, and morality, in constant motion; an epistemic modality with moral and political consequences for education.