The Heidegger Change: On the Fantastic in Philosophy

Introduction: Wandel, Wandlung, and Verwandlung

xxi Translator/Editor’s Preface capacity of beings to be distinct from each other, and thus even to be beings. No matter how various and radical the changes beings are made to undergo (shifts in global power, “Change We Can Believe In,” religious conversions, transgenderings, cultural hybridizations, biotechnologies . . .), nearly all of them have already been brought into “conformity” with (techno-)capitalism’s regime and form of value, which thus renders them mere tradable equivalents. What their transformations involve is of almost no importance given that they occur along a route that almost automatically converts them into exchange and surplus value (or “standing reserve”), and thus mere “content changes.” Beings become merely formal and thus almost completely indistinguishable. Countering this situation requires showing that transformation is a power inherent to each being, which in turns necessitates the development of a new, ontic approach to ontology. The fact that capitalism relentlessly forces beings to transform into each other nonetheless also foregrounds their capacity, which is irreducible to the value derived from it, to change themselves and the other. Viewed apart from its economic recuperation, this plasticity entails that what a being is changes as it integrates into itself characteristics of the other (through a process of habituating itself to these and thereby becoming estranged from  `‡ ~              an ultimate genre nor a corresponding fundamental form but by the sheer fact that they will always transport each other out of their present genres and into other forms. Their changes, once again, show that what beings are is just (that there is . . .) change. But this is no longer a purely ontological or capitalist statement. Being-as-change never entirely xxii Translator/Editor’s Preface   *  @* **   @ to its position: change as such can only be said    @* **   * * up playing that role. In fact, the plasticity of beings only seems ontological because the beings now mas-’  *  *  *` @* * change in techno-economic terms. Yet when seen from outside those value-forms, such changes show that plasticity is a capacity that belongs to beings as beings. What beings can become is not entirely or primarily determined by being, and being itself is always in turn subject to being changed by beings. Our greatest resource against capitalism therefore rests in our power to integrate from and impose on each other forms, which can deliver us from given, apparently inevitable forms. Making this power explicit, however, requires opposing the ontologico-capitalist form of transformation with a counterform. Although it could seem that deconstructing the reigning form would be enough to liberate change, the pervasiveness and self-evidence of “ontological capitalism” instead requires that a renewed and metamorphosed version of the question of “being”—given that there is change, not just, what change now passes for it?, but also, what change will instead?—be constantly, vigilantly addressed. Thinking thus becomes the double task of expressing,       Œ` *q       *  *      >   `  @* * *   ` ing a change, second, that can say this without at the same time casting all other changes in its terms alone. Such an “ontico-ontological” mode of thought would preserve the uniqueness of each change by conceiving change as a “global” form whose shape is always in tension with the casts of its local parts. xxiii Translator/Editor’s Preface The reader will have to discover for herself why Malabou regards biological life, and the plasticity of     @* *      €   > ` * >     Z € @@ ent why Malabou elsewhere conceives the plasticity of life as the image of a future “alter-globalism” in which people(s) will “exercise transformative effects on each other through the demands of recognition, domination, and of liberty.”4 If disputation and dialogue across historical and epistemic lines—exchanges of thought—are to take place under the current ontological conditions, the reciprocity of understanding and changes in perspective sought will have to be carefully distinguished from the coercive universalization of perspective typical of capitalism. Not only will the humanities have to stand down from their dominant, effectively ontological position, but dialogue will have to take a form in which the terms of discussion—the “neutral” terms by which divergent and often incommensurate positions could speak to and change each other—can be furnished by all and negotiated along the way. Conceptions of what might be minimally common to all thought will be needed, not thinking that all thoughts are already shared in common. Although what such common “concepts” could in the end be is largely unforeseeable, the idea that thought can always cast itself into form at the same time as...