Neurohistory is bunk? The not-so-deep history of the postclassical mind.

Abstract

The proliferation of late of disciplines beginning in "neuro"--neuroeconomics, neuroaesthetics, neuro-literary criticism, and so on--while welcomed in some quarters, has drawn a great deal of critical commentary as well. It is perhaps natural that scholars in the humanities, especially, tend to find these "neuro"-prefixes irritating. But by no means all of them: there are those humanists (evidently) who discern in this trend a healthy development that has the potential of "revitalizing" the notoriously bookish humanities. Neurohistory (or "deep" history) is a case in point, typically being dismissed (if registered at all) by historians while finding more sympathetic consideration elsewhere. While it sides with the former position, this essay attempts to develop a more complex picture. It will suggest that defiant humanists may underestimate the extent to which they are already participating in a culture profoundly tuned toward a quasi-naturalistic construction of the mind/brain as an embodied, situated, and distributed thing. The roots of this construction will be traced into the popular, academic, and technological discourses that began to surround the "user" in the 1980s, with special emphasis on the concomitant assault on "cognitivism." What is more, the very same story--insofar as it demonstrates the complicity of the "postclassical" mind with our own man-made and "digital" age--will serve to complicate the neuro-optimists' vision of human nature exposed by a new kind of science.