Malabou graduated from the École Normale Supérieure Lettres et Sciences Humaines (Fontenay-Saint-Cloud). Her agrégation and doctorate were obtained, under the supervision of Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Marion, from the École des hautes études en sciences sociales. Her dissertation became the book, L'Avenir de Hegel: Plasticité, Temporalité, Dialectique (1996).

Central to Malabou's philosophy is the concept of "plasticity," which she derives in part from the work of Hegel, as well as from medical science, for example, from work on stem cells and from the concept of neuroplasticity. In 1999, Malabou published Voyager avec Jacques Derrida — La Contre-allée, co-authored with Derrida. Her book, Les nouveaux blessés (2007), concerns the intersection between neuroscience, psychoanalysis, and philosophy, thought through the phenomenon of trauma.

In the last few years, Malabou has tackled an increasing range of themes and topics in her writing. Coinciding with her exploration of neuroscience has been a greater and greater commitment to political philosophy. This is first evident in her book What Should We Do With Our Brain? and continues in Les nouveaux blessés, as well as in her book on feminism (Changer de différence, le féminin et la question philosophique, Galilée, 2009), and in her forthcoming book about the homeless and social emergency (La grande exclusion, Bayard).

Malabou is currently co-authoring a book with Adrian Johnston on affects in Descartes, Spinoza and neuroscience, and is preparing a new book on the political meaning of life in the light of the most recent biological discoveries (mainly epigenetics). The latter work will discuss Giorgio Agamben's concept of "bare life" and Michel Foucault's notion of biopower, underscoring the lack of scientific biological definitions of these terms, and the political meaning of such a lack.

Books

• On Spinoza's Concept of Life (with Judith Butler, in preparation).
• Auto-affection and Emotional Lifre: Philosophy Psychoanalysis and Neurbiology (with Adrian Johnston, in preparation).
• Sois mon corps, with Judith Butler (Paris: Bayard, 2010); You Be My Body For Me, For, Corporeity, Plasticity in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit (London: Blackwell, forthcoming).
• La Grande Exclusion, l'urgence sociale, thérapie et symptômes (Paris: Bayard: 2009).
• Changer de différence, le féminin et la question philosophique, (Paris: Galilée 2009).
• La Chambre du milieu, de Hegel aux neurosciences, collected, (Paris: Hermann 2009).
• Ontologie de l'accident: Essai sur la plasticité destructrice (Paris: Éditions Léo Scheer, 2009).
• Les Nouveaux Blessés: de Freud a la neurologie: penser les traumatismes contemporains (Paris: Bayard, 2007).
• La Plasticité au soir de l'écriture (Paris: Éditions Léo Scheer, 2004); Plasticity at the Dusk of Writing: Dialectic, Destruction, Deconstruction (forthcoming New York: Columbia University Press, 2009, trans. Carolyn Shread).
• Que faire de notre cerveau? (Paris: Bayard, 2004); What Should We Do With Our Brain? (New York: Fordham University Press, 2009, trans. Sebastian Rand).
• Le Change Heidegger, du fantastique en philosophie (Paris: Éditions Léo Scheer, 2004). ("Heidegger Change", forthcoming New York: SUNY press)
• Plasticité (Paris: Éditions Léo Scheer, 1999).
• Voyager avec Jacques Derrida — La Contre-allée, with Jacques Derrida (Paris: La Quinzaine littéraire-Louis Vuitton, 1999); Counterpath: Traveling with Jacques Derrida (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004, trans. David Wills).
• L'Avenir de Hegel: Plasticité, Temporalité, Dialectique (Paris: Vrin, 1996); The Future of Hegel: Plasticity, Temporality, and Dialectic (New York: Routledge, 2004, trans. Lisabeth During).

Articles (selection)

• "Plasticity and Elasticity in Freud's 'Beyond the Pleasure Principle'," Parallax 15:2 (2009): 41—52.
• "A Conversation with Catherine Malabou", Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory 9 (2008): 1—13.
• "The End of Writing? Grammatology and Plasticity," The European Legacy: Toward New Paradigms 12 (2007): 431—441.
• "An Eye at the Edge of Discourse," Communication Theory 17 (2007): 16—25.
• "Another Possibility," Research in Phenomenology 36 (2006): 115—129.
• "The Form of an 'I'," in John D. Caputo & Michael J. Scanlon (eds.), Augustine and Postmodernism: Confessions and Circumfession (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005): 127—137.
• "History and the Process of Mourning in Hegel and Freud," Radical Philosophy 106 (2001): 15—20.
• "Plastic Readings of Hegel," Bulletin of the Hegel Society of Great Britain 41-42 (2000): 132—141.
• "The Future of Hegel: Plasticity, Temporality, Dialectic," Hypatia 15 (2000): 196-220.
• "Who's Afraid of Hegelian Wolves?," in Paul Patton (ed.), Deleuze: A Critical Reader (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996): 114—138.

Secondary literature

• Frédéric Worms, Ce qui est atteint dans le cerveau (Catherine Malabou, Les nouveaux Blessés), Esprit, Paris, February 2009, 204-208.
• Slavoj ?i?ek, Quando una vittima sopravvive alla propria morte (on Catherine Malabou Les nouveaux Blessés), Il Manifesto, Roma, January 2008, 12.
• Slavoj ?i?ek, Descartes and the Post-Traumatic Subject, on Catherine Malabou’s Les nouveaux Blessés and Other Autistic Monsters, Qui parle, Berkeley, vol. 17, 2, Spring/Summer 2009, 123-147.
• Jean-Paul Martinon, On Futurity, Malabou, Nancy and Derrida, New York : Palgrave and Macmillan, 2007.
• Elie During, Politiques du cerveau, (on Catherine Malabou Que faire de notre cerveau ?), Art Press, 302, June 2004, 12-20.
• Servanne Jolivet, Heidegger d’un change à l’autre : Catherine Malabou, Didier Franck, François Raffoul, Revue philosophique de la France et de l’étranger, Paris : PUF, 4, October/December 2004, 455-468.
• Jean-Philippe Milet, Heidegger en anamorphose?, (on Catherine Malabou, Le Change Heidegger. Du fantastique en philosophie), Critique, Paris : Editions de Minuit, 2004, 691, 93-107.
• Karin de Boer, Thinking in the Light of Time. Heidegger's Encounter with Hegel, Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, Hegel Studien, Bochum, 2004, Volume 49/50, 80-94.
• Mark Alizart, Plasticiens, arts plastiques, plasticité, Critique, Paris : Editions de Minuit, 649-650, June-July 2001, 540-550.
• Lisabeth During, Catherine Malabou and the Currency of Hegelianism, Hypatia, Fall 2000, Vol. 15, No. 4, 190-195.
• Önay Sözer, Zukunft aus dem Geist der Plaztizität, Hegel Studien, Bochum, 1997, Volume 70, 28-42.