Catherine Malabou

Is contemporary continental philosophy making a break with Kant? The structures of knowledge, taken for granted since Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, are now being called into question: the finitude of the subject, the phenomenal given, a priori synthesis. Relinquish the transcendental: such is the imperative of postcritical thinking in the 21st century. Questions that we no longer thought it...

The clitoris was absent in anatomy books, in paintings and sculptures, absent in spirit and even body; it has long been the organ of erased pleasure. We assume that this oversight has been repaired in our times: today, the clitoris is not forgotten but honoured. Conferences, books, manifestos, and works of art are all devoted to it. The autonomy of...

The clitoris was absent in anatomy books, in paintings and sculptures, absent in spirit and even body; it has long been the organ of erased pleasure. We assume that this oversight has been repaired in our times: today, the clitoris is not forgotten but honoured. Conferences, books, manifestos, works of art are all devoted to it. The autonomy of clitoral...

Many contemporary philosophers – including Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and Giorgio Agamben – ascribe an ethical or political value to anarchy, but none ever called themselves an “anarchist.” It is as if anarchism were unmentionable and had to be concealed, even though its critique of domination and of government is poached by the philosophers. Stop Thief! calls out the plundering...

In her new book, There Was No Revolution, Catherine Malabou argues that the French Revolution existed in name only, not in reality. Privileges disappeared only on the surface, and the old forms of domination persisted in structuring everyday life. French citizens soon came to ask: "How is it that we are falling back into the same patterns of privilege and...