CRMEP Public Lectures, Autumn/Winter 2026/7, 6: Catherine Malabou, ‘Which Comes First, Yes or No? Bergson, Alain, Freud’

Is affirmation the primordial gesture of thought, with negation arising only afterward as refusal, correction, or withdrawal? Or does thought begin with the capacity to say no—to interrupt what is given, suspend adherence, and open a distance within experience? This lecture explores the asymmetry between affirmation and negation through Bergson, Alain, and Freud among others. For Bergson, reality is fundamentally affirmative: negation does not belong to things themselves but emerges through intellectual expectation and social address. Alain, by contrast, famously maintains that thinking means saying no, making refusal the inaugural gesture of judgment and freedom. Freud’s essay ‘Negation’ radically complicates this opposition: the ‘no’ allows a repressed content to enter consciousness while preserving the repression that excludes it. Negation simultaneously refuses and admits; it is already a compromised affirmation. In Hegel, finally, negativity is neither a secondary logical operation nor a simple act of refusal, but the movement through which determination, subjectivity, and affirmation themselves become possible.