Biological Plasticity and Performative Possibility in the Work of Catherine Malabou and Curious

Reading Catherine Malabou’s philosophy of plasticity with performance artist duo Leslie Hill and Helen Paris’ embodied practice of autobiology, I theorize feminist engagements with biological materiality and propose a consideration of the performative neuroplasticity of the gut. This intervention has significant implications for the performativity of identity in everyday life: the synaptic event revises the genetic code and transforms the biological program. Moving between material and symbolic orders, contemporary feminist representations of the (in)visible body perform new possibilities for embodied speech acts.

• Literary and Cultural Studies
• Science and Technology Studies

• Book Chapter, Palgrave Macmillan

• School of Literature, Media, and Communication