The Heidegger Change: On the Fantastic in Philosophy

Translator/Editor’s Preface

Contents Translator/Editor’s Preface xi Introduction: Wandel, Wandlung, and Verwandlung (W, W, & V) 1 More than a Title 3 The Situation of the Question of Change in Heidegger’s Thought 14 The Migratory-Metamorphic Articulation 19 The Janus-Head Gestell 24 Heidegger and the Others 26 PART I: Metamorphoses and Migrations of Metaphysics 31 Change at the Beginning 31 The Double Process of Schematization 32 1. The Metabolism of the Immutable 37 The Structural Traits of Philosophy 38 The Whole-Form and Its Particular Trajectories 43 Change—and Change 46 2. The Mound of Visions: Plato Averts His Gaze 53 “Heidegger’s Doctrine of Truth” 54 Miming Bildung 63 History and Change 65 viii Contents First Incision: Geltung 71 3. “Color, the Very Look of Things, Their Eidos, Presencing, Being—This Is What Changes” 77 W, W, & V, or the Real Foundation of Inversion 80 The Will and Its Fashioning 87 The Inclusion of the Thinker in What Is Thought 90 The Transformation of Transcendence 94 4. Outline of a Cineplastic of Being 99 From One Change to the Other: Persistence of Form and Trajectory 102 Continuity and Rupture 104 The Two Turns (of Phrase) of the Heideggerian Cineplastic 112 PART II: The New Ontological Exchange 123 How Is There Change from the Beginning? 124 Ereignis as Interchange 127 Gestell: The Essential Mechanism 128 5. Changing the Gift 129 The Appearances of W, W, & V in Time and Being 130 Ereignis and Donation 143 Second Incision: Gunst 149 6. Surplus Essence: Gestell and Automatic Conversion 155 “A Change in Being—That is, Now, in the Essence of Gestell—Comes to Pass . . .” 158 What is a Changing Alterity? 169 ix Contents 7. The Fantastic Is Only Ever an Effect of the Real 179 The Crossing of Essences 180 A Form Whose Homeland Is No Longer Metaphysics 187 Third Incision: Changing the Symbolic 197 PART III: % & ' *  #+ What Cannot Be Left Must Be  ; @      * X Kafka Reading Being and Time #  *     Z ## The Essential Characteristics of   *  #!  $ `   q #{{  * |  &   _}    ~  #{=   > #{ Z € ` ` #= 10. Man and Dasein, Z  *  \  #=‚ Stimmung   @  *  #= |  _>      ƒ@  #‚  #= |      Z  * #! x Contents Notes 291 Bibliography of Cited Works by Heidegger 327 Other Works Cited 333 Index Nominum 337 Index Rerum 339 xi Translator/Editor’s Preface Bringing Catherine Malabou’s philosophy into English form involves very different problems than did the translation of the generation of intellectuals and philosophers associated with “French theory.” Not only does Malabou belong to a moment (which she calls “la génération d’après”) when long, intricate sentences and self-referential language no longer provide the basic structure of theoretical thought, but her work itself abandons one of the chief presuppositions that made that its preferred form. Making the capacity of things to give, receive, and change their own and each other’s forms the basic character and condition of the real results in a very different understanding of things than one that grants differences that role. The power of each individual to resist and change the other becomes just as important as (if not more crucial than) the capacity to be affected by the other. What fails to withstand the other will never be able to integrate enough from it to undergo change. The consequences for writing and translation are almost immediate. Language that is stable, not so much polyvalent as subtly ambiguous, and even closed down to certain meanings turns out to be more effective at conveying this new ontological and politico-ethical status of identity than the xii Translator/Editor’s Preface old fragmented and plurilinear style. Malabou thus often renders her prose (especially in this book and her part of Contre-Allée/Counterpath1 in terms so deliberate that the polysemy necessary for its reading and interpretation is kept from feeding back on and endlessly amplifying itself. As for translation, the *>>@ **`Š*     €  strong traces of the cadence, tone, and grammatical structure of the original language is no longer selfevidently good. Reminding readers of the inadequacy `        €  ˆ  @* *` the original becomes less useful for transmitting its thoughts than bending them into idioms more ordinary in the other language. Cast in such familiar language, the translation takes on the sort of sharp     >       * €  the duplicity or untranslatability of the original needs to be exposed, the translation is strong enough to sustain punctures and gaps. Translating in such a “plastic” fashion allowed the character and meaning of Malabou’s writing to emerge more than would...