Lecture

IPH Prof. Catherine Malabou “On the Plasticity of the Unconditional”

Catherine Malabou

Date: Tuesday 10 February 2026
Time: 14:15 - 16:00
Location: P.J. Veth
Nonnensteeg 1-3
2311 VJ Leiden
Room: 1.01

On 9 February 2026, the dies natalis of Leiden University, Professor Catherine Malabou will be awarded the degree of doctor honoris causa of our university.

You are warmly welcomed to two events following this ceremony:

On 10 February, Professor Malabou will give a public lecture at the Institute for Philosophy of Leiden University. Titled “On the Plasticity of the Unconditional”, the lecture will take its departure from and against Jacques Derrida’s ‘University Without Condition’ and discuss the situation of the university today. All philosophers and other interested people are welcome. The talk will take place at 14:15 – 16:00 at P J Veth building 1.01, and it will be followed by a reception at the brasserie of the Faculty Club.

Registration: c.w.sombroek@hum.leidenuniv.nl

On 11 February Professor Malabou will engage in an open discussion with students in an event organised with the philosophy student organisation Symposium. This talk will take place at 15:00-17:00 in Lipsius 1.30. This event is also open to all those who are interested in discussing prof. Malabou’s work and the role of philosophers in the contemporary world.

About

Professor Catherine Malabou was born in Algeria, studied in Paris, and has worked as professor of philosophy at the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy (CRMEP) at Kingston University, as well as at the European Graduate School and the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of California, Irvine. She previously held the Spinoza Chair in Philosophy in Amsterdam.

Professor Malabou is a well-chosen honorary doctor because she has been a continuous defender of the relevance of the humanities – and the university – within a globalised world. Her approach has always been to champion openness toward the natural sciences and social sciences, be that to reckon with the consequences of new information technologies, neuroscientific discoveries, or climate science. In this way, she has exemplified an admirable approach to both research and education, one that shows us exactly why we need to protect universities today: because it forms one of the few sites where the endeavour to orient ourselves in a rapidly changing world has a privileged placed. For Malabou, philosophy is first and foremost the art of distinguishing and the work of critique as a constant engagement with other disciplines.

Professor Malabou’s vast bibliography testifies to her multifaceted interests. Her first works draw from the history of philosophy, especially Kant, Hegel, Freud, Heidegger, and Derrida, whom she reads in the light of contemporary challenges. Against this tradition she has formulated an original theory of plasticity, understood as capacity of taking form, giving form and even of destroying form. Originally a student of Derrida, her manner of working is nourished by deconstruction, but she is also critical of its abstraction. Instead, she advocates an overcoming of the continental-analytic divide, and proposes her theory of plasticity as a form of new materialism.

Professor Malabou has essentially posed the question of materialism as the question of the materiality of the thing traditionally called “mind”, in the brain as well as in computers. She has engaged with sciences of mind, such as neurology and psychanalysis, and with computer science and AI and shown how these new discoveries also oblige to reform inherited philosophical conceptions of thinking.

Professor Malabou has a great interest in contemporary society and its political challenges. In her first works, this interest translated into the question of the social context of mental trauma and illnesses. She also worked on feminism, where she has co-authored a book with Judith Butler and written recently a joyous little book on the clitoris. In recent years, her interest has focused on anarchism as a generative problematic for philosophy and politics alike. Evident in all these interventions is Professor Malabou’s rigorous passion for philosophical thinking. It is with good reason that they have established her reputation as a preeminent thinker of the 21st century, not only among Continental philosophers, but also among the many scholars in other disciplines who today draw on and engage with her work.

See: Honorary doctorates for Safiya Umoja Noble and Catherine Malabou during 2026 Dies Natalis - Leiden University

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