Kinetics of Human Motion Book

This is my first reading of Malabou, and I have to say that I was a bit disappointed. First of all, I feel she caricatures Bergson - who I feel would be more of an ally to the insights of neuroplasticity than she admits in the book. I also don't know what Darwinian neuroscientists she's critiquing in the book, but the short gloss she gives of natural selection is also quite superficial. To be sure, some people interpret natural selection as "the best," but more nuanced interpretations show how it is basically the reaction of biology to the actions of the organism in the environment. Her short description of neural connections as either growing or withering based upon which actions were performed would seem to accord with that description.

Finally, I have to say that Malabou's interest in "explosion" seems quite aligned with the ideology of today. It's like we're caught in a binary of just submitting to the demands to be flexible, or we cease to be flexible and resist "explosively" the oppressions that are put upon us. But this binary is itself a product of the time we live in. She makes a feeble argument that "some explosions are not in fact terrorist - explosions of rage for example" - apparently saying that her own appeal to explosiveness isn't embedded in the same logic. But that seems disingenuous.

I loved Malabou's argument that plasticity involves something more than flexibility, and to misrecognize this means that we simply submit to the ideology of precarious labor. I find that to add a political dimension to other books in the philosophy of mind - those of Francisco Varela and Andy Clark. Yet I have to say that I find Varela, Clark, and Evan Thompson's analysis of the actual neurobiology to be more detailed, nuanced, and compelling. Perhaps her other books are better.