Catherine Malabou: Mirroring and Conflicting Subliminalities

In this keynote lecture for the Metamorphoses of Mimesis Conference organized by the Gendered Mimesis project (KU Leuven & Leiden U, February 2023), French philosopher Catherine Malabou contributes to the mimetic turn by exploring the mirroring and conflicting subliminalities that--from Pierre Janet to Breton, Bhabha to Tutuola--open up an immanent conception of the subconscious that finds in both plasticity and mimesis its genealogical starting point. Joining forces with mimetic studies, Malabou's account of the subliminal challenges an autonomous conception of free subjectivity rooted in a sublime aesthetics along feminist and decolonial lines that give new plastic forms to the metamorphoses of mimesis.