Plasticity and/as Race: Rethinking Philosophy’s Relationship to the Life Sciences
Issue: • Author/s: Kelly Happe
Topics: Epistemology, Philosophy of Biology, Philosophy of Race, Philosophy of science, Theoretical philosophy
This essay engages Catherine Malabou’s provocation that the life sciences can provide a materialist theory of thought (plasticity) that can reimagine agency, identity, and freedom. Paying particular attention to the science of epigenetics and its potential rethinking of origins and history in the name of a radical futurity, I argue that in fact it shows that plasticity is the very mode by which power is enacted and reproduced, specifically anti-black notions of race. I conclude with a brief discussion of Zakkiyah Jackson and her theory of plasticity, to show that…