Of times before tomorrow: contingency and the life of machines

ABSTRACT

In Before Tomorrow: Epigenesis and Rationality (2014), Catherine Malabou argues that the current schism between innate a priori and a posteriori manufacture is symptomatic of our failure thus far to think the figure of epigenesis. Based primarily on a close reading of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, Malabou maintains that epigenesis configures a possible line of flight beyond both the rigid prior accord of preformation and the magical inorganicism of generatio aequivoca, thereby transforming the principle of reason itself in making available for the first time the generative force proper to thought. In this paper, I aim to further clarify the process of temporal articulation by focusing on the alleged inseparability that Malabou seeks to establish between epigenetic temporality, the biological process to which it refers, and the future of the living being. To this end, I will be guided by three questions: first, why is it that only life possesses the capacity to manufacture within itself the future revelation of prior meaning? Second, on what basis can epigenesis be distinguished from automatism? And third, what exactly is the ‘newly figural’ element of life that for Malabou transforms both the principle of reason and the entire system of critique?