Abstract
The cyborgization of brainbodies with computer hardware and software today ranges in scope from the realization of Brain–Computer Interfaces (BCIs) to visions of mind upload to silicon, the latter being targeted toward a transhuman future. Refining posthumanist concepts to formulate a posthumanities perspective, and contrasting those approaches with transhumanist trajectories, I explore the intersectional dimension of realizations and visions of neuro-technological developments, which I name TechnoBrainBodies-in-Cultures. In an intersectional analysis, I investigate the embedding and legitimation of transhumanist visions brought about by neuroscientific research and neuro-technological development based on a concept of modern neurobiological determinism. The conjoined trajectories of BCI research and development and transhumanist visions perpetuate the inscription of intersectional norms, with the concomitant danger of producing discriminatory effects. This culminates in normative capacity being seen as a conflation of the abled, successful, white masculinized techno-brain with competition. My deeper analysis, however, also enables displacements within recent BCI research and development to be characterized: from ‘‘thought-translation” to affective conditioning and from controllability to obstinacy within the BCI, going so far as to open the closed loop. These realizations challenge notions about the BCI's actor status and agency and foster questions about shifts in the corresponding subject–object relations. Based on these analyses, I look at the effects of neuro-technological and transhumanist governmentality on the question of whose lives are to be improved and whose lives should be excluded from these developments. Within the framework of political feminist materialisms, I combine the concept of posthumanities with my concept of TechnoBrainBodies-in-Cultures to envision and discuss a material-discursive strategy, encompassing dimensions of affect, sociality, resistance, compassion, cultural diversity, ethnic diversity, multiple sexes/sexualities, aging, dis/abilities—in short, all of this “intersectional stuff”—as well as obstinate techno-brain agencies and contumacies foreseen in these cyborgian futures.
Highlights
In a recent documentary entitled “Myth of the Artificial Brain” (Denjean, 2017)1, the French/German Television ARTE France channel presented an up-to-date account of the state of neuroscientific research and neuro-technological development, as well as outlining current visions of transhumanism
Over the last few years, a new reciprocal connectivity has emerged: protagonists from both sides—the neurosciences/neurotechnologies and transhumanism—mutually refer to each other’s findings, developments, and visions with a positive couleur, in particular just those interconnections popularized by the ARTE documentary
In search of the foundations that lead to transhumanism, I will refer to these findings and proceed to focus on the relevant aspects of recent Brain–Computer Interfaces (BCIs) research and development from the second half of the 2010s in order to search for intersectional issues that link various “-isms” such as rationalism, sexisms, racisms, emotionalism, controlism, and agentialism, with a particular focus on unforeseeable developments
Summary
Reviewed by: Robyn Bluhm, Michigan State University, United States Hillevi Lenz Taguchi, Stockholm University, Sweden. The conjoined trajectories of BCI research and development and transhumanist visions perpetuate the inscription of intersectional norms, with the concomitant danger of producing discriminatory effects This culminates in normative capacity being seen as a conflation of the abled, successful, white masculinized techno-brain with competition. Enables displacements within recent BCI research and development to be characterized: from ‘‘thought-translation” to affective conditioning and from controllability to obstinacy within the BCI, going so far as to open the closed loop. These realizations challenge notions about the BCI’s actor status and agency and foster questions about shifts in the corresponding subject–object relations.
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