Educating ‘cerebral subjects’: The emergence of brain talk in the Argentinean society

Abstract

This article focuses on both the dissemination of neuroscientific knowledge and its social implications through the analysis of a television program entitled The Enigmas of the Brain hosted by an Argentinean neuroscientist. My main concern in this article is to analyze some of the discursive uses of brain talk, that is, the many ways in which brain terminology is engaged in accounts about what the brain does and how some terms are linked together in order to create a sense of brain causality in a number of heterogeneous processes. The research that led to this article follows a qualitative design. The content of the television show was transcribed and analyzed following a content analysis strategy. This data is part of a sociological research project about the cognitive neuroscience field in Argentina. I suggest that brain talk is more about creating new words to explain and make sense of life than about communicating scientific information to a lay audience. As it is explained in the program, the purpose is to educate the public, but I argue that not in the sense of giving new information, but in the sense of producing linguistic resources that encourage the emergence of new self-narratives.