Mapping the Cerebral Subject in Contemporary Culture

Abstract

The research reported here aims at mapping the “cerebral subject” in contemporary society. The term “cerebral subject” refers to an anthropological figure that embodies the belief that human beings are essentially reducible to their brains. Our focus is on the discourses, images and practices that might globally be designated as “neuroculture.” From public policy to the arts, from the neurosciences to theology, humans are often treated as reducible to their brains. The new discipline of neuroethics is eminently symptomatic of such a situation; other examples can be drawn from science fiction in writing and film; from practices such as “neurobics” or cerebral cryopreservation; from neurophilosophy and the neurosciences; from debates about brain life and brain death; from practices of intensive care, organ transplantation, and neurological enhancement and prosthetics; from the emerging fields of neuroesthetics, neurotheology, neuroeconomics, neuroeducation, neuropsychoanalysis and others. This research in progress traces the diversity of neurocultures, and places them in a larger context characterized by the emergence of somatic “bioidentities” that replace psychological and internalistic notions of personhood. It does so by examining not only discourses and representations, but also concrete social practices, such as those that take shape in the politically powerful “neurodiversity” movement, or in vigorously commercialized “neuroascetic” disciplines of the self.