Derivative Desires and Plastic Pedagogies: Malabou, Psychoanalysis and The Big Short

This article explores Catherine Malabou’s philosophical foray into neuroscience, especially her continuing work on the topics of brain plasticity and epigenesis. I lay the groundwork for a productive intersection of Malabou’s philosophy with Lacanian psychoanalytic film theory, despite Malabou’s tendency to treat the brain’s plasticity as an issue beyond the scope of the Freudian-Lacanian conception of the unconscious. Through consideration of Todd McGowan’s development of a Lacanian ontology, and by reference to the structure of derivative finance in late capitalism, especially as depicted in The Big Short (Adam McKay, 2015), the article argues in favor of an epigenesis of desire, in which attentiveness to the sedimented layers and conflicted temporalities of the brain’s synaptic connections may prove illuminating for philosophical studies of films that adopt a pedagogical stance toward recent historical or political events.