The Ontology of the Accident - Catherine Malabou

In the usual order of things, lives run their course and eventuallyone becomes who one is. Bodily and psychic transformations donothing but reinforce the permanence of identity. But as a resultof serious trauma, or sometimes for no reason at all, asubject's history splits and a new, unprecedented personacomes to live with the former person - an unrecognizable personawhose present comes from no past and whose future harbors nothingto come; an existential improvisation, a form born of the accidentand by accident. Out of a deep cut opened in a biography, a newbeing comes into the world for a second time.

What is this form? A face? A psychological profile? What ontologycan it account for, if ontology has always been attached to theessential, forever blind to the ala oftransformations? What history of being can the plastic power ofdestruction explain? What can it tell us about the explosivetendency of existence that secretly threatens each one of us?

Continuing her reflections on destructive plasticity, splitidentities and the psychic consequences experienced by those whohave suffered brain injury or have been traumatized by war andother catastrophes, Catherine Malabou invites us to join her in aphilosophic and literary adventure in which Spinoza, Deleuze andFreud cross paths with Proust and Duras.