Essays in French Literature and Culture (Oct 2021)
The Plastic Hospital: Catherine Malabou’s Architectural Therapeutics
Abstract
This article stages encounters between the contemporary French philosopher Catherine Malabou and the French Medical Humanities. Whilst Malabou’s philosophy of the body and brain focuses largely on sites of irreversible destruction and (neuro)pathology, I argue that her thought also calls for new conceptions of therapy and care, laying the foundations for radical transformations in clinical practice and architecture. Further, I argue that Malabou’s philosophy paves the way for a new relationship between French thought and clinical architectures and spaces, moving past Michel Foucault’s Naissance de la Clinique (1963) to propose a more positive, mutually transformative interaction between philosophy and the hospital.
