Catherine Malabou. The Deconstruction of Biopolitics. 2012

‪http://www.egs.edu/ Catherine Malabou, philosopher and author, talking about Foucault's deconstruction of biopolitics. In this lecture Catherine Malabou discusses Hobbe's Leviathan model of sovereignty, biopolitics as disciplinary power, the relationship between biology and politics, Agamben's critique of Foucault and the function of symbolism in psychoanalysis in relationship to Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben, Jacques Derrida, Thomas Hobbes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Aristotle, Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan focusing on non-sovereign power, biopower, the individual body, will, the notion of organism, the structure of kingship, power relations, intentionality, resistance, self-subjugation, transgression and sexuality. Public open lecture for the students and faculty of the European Graduate School EGS Media and Communication Studies department program Saas-Fee Switzerland Europe. 2012. Catherine Malabou.

Catherine Malabou, Ph.D., born in 1959, was a student at the École normal supérieure (ENS) and Sorbonne University in France. She wrote her dissertation on Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel under the direction of the French philosopher Jacques Derrida, completing it in 1994. The thesis was published in 1996 under the title L'Avenir de Hegel, plasticité, temporalité, dialectique (The Future of Hegel: Plasticity, Temporality, and Dialectic). Catherine Malabou has taught at Nanterre University in Paris, the University of California at Berkeley, the New School for Social Research in New York City and currently is a full-time professor at the Centre for Modern European Philosophy of Kingston in the United Kingdom. She also teaches an intensive summer seminar at the European Graduate School (EGS).

Catherine Malabou is a specialist of contemporary French and German philosophy, with a focus on Hegel and Heidegger. She is most famous for her concept of ontological "plasticity." Her work also incorporates neuroscience and neuro-psychoanalysis. Malabou has published many works including Voyager avec Jacques Derrida - La Contre-allée (1999, English publication in 2004 entitled Counterpath), Que faire de notre cerveau? (2004, English publication in 2008 entitled What Should We Do with Our Brain?), La Plasticité au soir de l'écriture : Dialectique, destruction, deconstruction (2005, English publication in 2009 entitled Plasticity at the Dusk of Writing: Dialectic, Destruction, Deconstruction), Changer de différence (2009, English publication in 2011 entitled Changing differences). More recently, Catherine Malabou published a book in French with Judith Butler entitled Sois mon corps (2010). She also manages a philosophy book series for the French publisher Éditions Léo Scheer.