Editor: Aleš Mendiževec
Translation: Sonja Dolar
Editorial board: Pia Brezavšček, Janez Janša, Aleš Mendiževec, Gregor Moder, Eva Smrekar, Alja Lobnik
Oroginal title: Le plaisir effacé. Clitoris et pensée © Éditions Payot & Rivages, Paris, 2020
Preface: Delovni odbor za feminizem Študentskega društva Iskra, Bralni krožek Kritična psihologija, Sestrovščina ponosnega delfina, Podpornice Kurdskega osvobodilnega gibanja in ženske revolucije, Maska
Deleted pleasure. The clitoris and thought – a title that says it all: it is not a philosophy that tries to establish the concept of the clitoris as a concept of female pleasure, but it is a story, more precisely, it is a string of different cases of dealing with the clitoris, which testify to our inability to understand it as independent, a perfect pleasure. A pleasure that cannot be controlled, that cannot be subdued, a pleasure that always resists. It resists both men and women, it does not belong to anyone, as it is a sign of femininity itself, which does not submit to any position. Before anything else, the clitoris is a space: the space between the vagina and the clitoris, between the clitoris and the phallus, between the biological and the symbolic. An uncontrollable gap, which as such carries political implications – there is something anarchic about the clitoris.
The translation of Malabou’s book was a process parallel with the activities of the reading
group with the editor being a mediator between the translation part and theoretical and methodological elaborations of the group that was also a part of the Power of Pleasure research team of the Testing Ground project. Through this mediation, the translation was enriched via an understanding of the practical environment and at the same time contributing to theoretical concepts, theoretical discussions and development of suitable methodologies.
Catherine Malabou is a French philosopher and teaches in the Department of Philosophy at the Center for the Study of Modern European Philosophy at Kingston University, London, at the European Graduate School, and at the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of California, Irvine. She received her doctorate from Jacques Derrida with a dissertation that became her first book in 1996, entitled L’Avenir de Hegel: Plasticité, Temporalité, Dialectique (Hegel’s Future: Plasticity, Temporality, Dialectique). She is known for the concept of plasticity, which she developed while reading Hegel’s philosophy, and later reconsidered in the field of modern neuroscience. In her works, she also deals with feminism and the concept of difference, psychoanalysis and the concept of trauma, cognitive science and the concept of artificial intelligence, and in recent works with the political idea of anarchism.