Abstract
This chapter explores the aspirational applications of neuroscience to society and argues that such efforts bring with them a distinctive political program that seeks to reduce social, cultural, and political conditions to neurological and thus naturalistic phenomenon, where humans are situated as objects rather than subjects. Rather than critiquing the faulty inferences and base assumptions of recent neuro-rhetoric, this chapter instead addresses the reification of those qua neurological languages into governing practices. Doing so reveals the ways that two broad motifs, transcendence and determinism, contribute to the formation of this political program and how both motifs may well also reveal prospective futures for governing through the brain. In so doing, Casper seeks to demonstrate more generally that the assumptions and excessive enthusiasms that have mediated the expansion of somatic and mechanistic concepts into the cultural imaginary are already beginning artificially to harden scientific findings into governing inferences. That is, theories and ideas broadly understood to be under constant negotiation among scientists and clinicians are increasingly being resurrected in the form of absolute truth statements about human conduct and nature.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
This paragraph is directly quoted from a longer discussion of contagious shooting that first appeared in an essay I wrote in 2014. Any comparison between this essay and the one published then will show that I am concerned by a wholly different set of issues here. However, it was this discussion online that led to my invitation to participate in this volume, and I have kept this paragraph as a way of connecting to the broader themes of the volume. See Casper, S. T. 2014c. “The Recent History of Contagious Shooting (1982–2006) and More Recent Events in Ferguson, Missouri.”
- 2.
- 3.
- 4.
- 5.
- 6.
The Marquis de Condorcet was an Enlightenment French philosopher, mathematician, and political scientist who espoused the idea of unlimited progress with respect to the human race. See Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind (1794).
- 7.
See, for example, Rosenberg’s (2011) discussion of blindsight, pp. 150–151.
- 8.
References
Bard, B. (1966, May 21). The ‘BrainWatchers’ in the schools. New York Post.
Bennett, M. R., & Hacker, P. M. S. (2003). Philosophical foundations of neuroscience. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
Capshew, J. H. (1999). Psychologists on the march: Science, practice, and professional identity in America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Casey, B. P. (2015). The surgical elimination of violence? Conflicting attitudes towards technology and science during the psychosurgery controversy of the 1970s. Science in Context, 28(1), 99–129.
Casper, S. T. (2014a). An integrative legacy: History and neuroscience. Isis, 105(1), 123–132.
Casper, S. T. (2014b). The neurologists: A history of a medical specialty in Britain¸1789–2000. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Casper, S. T. (2014c). The recent history of “Contagious Shooting” (1982–2006) and more recent events in Ferguson, Missouri. http://somatosphere.net/2014/08/the-recent-history-of-contagious-shooting-1982-2006-and-more-recent-events-in-ferguson-missouri.html. Accessed 11 Feb 2015.
Casper, S. T., & Jacyna, L. S. (2012). The neurological patient in history. Rochester: University of Rochester Press.
Clarke, E., & Jacyna, L. S. (1987). Nineteenth century of origins of neuroscientific concepts. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Crawford, A. (2012). The pros to being a psychopath. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-pros-to-being-a-psychopath-96723962/?noist=&page=2. Accessed 2 Feb 2015.
de Sio, F. (2011). Leviathan and the soft animal: Medical humanism and the invertebrate models for higher nervous functions, 1950s–90s. Medical History, 55(3), 369–374.
Devine, P. G. (2001). Implicit prejudice and stereotyping: How automatic are they? Introduction to the special section. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81(5), 757–759.
Foucault, M. (1970). The order of things. An archaeology of the human sciences. London: Pantheon Books.
Fukuyama, F. (2002). Our posthuman future. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.
Fuller, S. (2014). Neuroscience, neurohistory, and the history of science: A tale of two brain images. Isis, 105(1), 100–109.
Gladwell, M. (2005). Blink: The power of thinking without thinking. New York: Little, Brown, and Company.
Greenwald, A. G., & Banaji, M. R. (1995). Implicit social cognition: Attitudes, self-esteem, and stereotypes. Psychological Review, 102(1), 4–27.
Hale, P. J. (2014). Political descent: Malthus, mutualism, and the politics of evolution in Victorian England. Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press.
Harding, S. (Ed.) (1993). The ‘Racial’ economy of science: Towards a democratic future. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Harvey, D. (1991). The condition of postmodernity: An enquiry into the origins of cultural change. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Henrich, J., Heine, S. J., & Norenzayen, A. (2010). The weirdest people in the world? Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 33, 61–135.
Hobbes, T. (2015 [1651]). McMaster University. http://socserv2.socsci.mcmaster.ca/econ/ugcm/3ll3/hobbes/Leviathan.pdf. Accessed 6 June 2015.
Hurley, D. (2012). The brain trainers. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/04/education/edlife/a-new-kind-of-tutoring-aims-to-make-students-smarter.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0. Accessed 9 Feb 2015.
Jacoby, R., & Glauberman, N. (Eds.) (1995). The Bell Curve debate: History, documents, opinions. New York: Random House.
Johnson, J. (2014). American lobotomy: A rhetorical history. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan.
Kappers, C. U. A. (1932). The brain of a Lebanese. In C. J. Herrick (Ed.), Anniversary volumes of the Journal of Comparative Neurolog (pp. 15–26). Philadelphia: The Wistar Institute Press.
Kraut, A. M. (1994). Silent travelers: Germs, genes, and the “immigrant menace”. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Lackoff, G. (2008). The political mind: Why you can’t understand 21st-century American politics with an 18th-century brain. New York: Viking.
Langlitz, N. (2013). Neurospychedelia: The revival of hallucinogen research since the decade of the brain. Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press.
Latour, B. (1996). On actor-network theory: A few clarifications. Soziale Welt, 47, 369–381.
Leys, R. (2000). Trauma: A geneaology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Leys, R., & Goldman, M. (2010). Navigating the genealogies of trauma, guilt, and affect: An interview. University of Toronto Quarterly, 79(2), 656–679.
Littlefield, M. M., et al. (2014). Contextualizing neuro-collaborations: Reflections on a transdisciplinary fMRI lie detection experiment. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 8, 1–11.
Morning, A. (2006). www.cnn.com . http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0611/28/ltm.01.html. Accessed 4 Feb 2010.
Napoli, D. S. (1981). Architects of adjustment: The history of the psychological profession in the United States. London: Kennikat Press.
Olson, G. (2012). Empathy imperiled: Capitalism, culture, and the brain. New York/London: Springer.
Otis, L. (2000). Membranes: Metaphors of invasion in nineteenth-century literature, science, and politics. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press.
Pearl, R. (1934). The weight of the Negro brain. Science, 80(2080), 431–434.
Politser, P. (2008). Neuroeconomics: A guide to the new science of making choices. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Porter, R. (Ed.) (1991). The Faber book of madness. London: Faber and Faber.
Pressman, J. (1998). Last resort: Psychosurgery and the limits of medicine. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Quétel, C. (1992). The history of syphilis. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Reverby, S. M. (2009). Examining Tuskegee: The infamous syphilis study and its legacy. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Richards, R. J. (1987). Darwin and the emergence of evolutionary theories of mind and behavior. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Rose, N. (2003). The neurochemical self and its anomalies. In R. Ericson (Ed.), Risk and morality (pp. 407–437). Toronto: University of Toronto Press..
Rose, N., & Abi-Rached, J. (2013). Neuro: The new brain sciences and the management of the mind. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Rosenberg, A. (2011). The atheist’s guide to reality: Enjoying life without illusions. New York: W. W. Norton.
Rostker, B. D., et al. (2008). Evaluation of the New York City Police Department firearm training and firearm-discharge review process. Santa Monica: RAND Corporation.
Saad, G. (2011). The consuming instinct: What juicy burgers, Ferraris, pornography, and gift giving reveal about human nature. Amherst: Prometheus.
Smail, D. L. (2008). On deep history and the brain. Berkeley/Los Angles: University of California Press.
Smail, D. L. (2014). Neurohistory in action: Hoarding and the human past. Isis, 105(1), 110–122.
Smith, R. (1997). Norton history of the human sciences. New York: W. W. Norton.
Smith, R. (2007). Being human: Historical knowledge and the creation of human nature. New York: Columbia University Press.
Smith, R. (2013). Free will and the human sciences in Britain, 1870–1910. London/Brookfield: Pickering & Chatto.
Society for Neuroscience. (2005). Past and future annual meetings: Neuroscience 2005. http://www.sfn.org/Annual-Meeting/Past-and-Future-Annual-Meetings/2005. Accessed 9 Feb 2015.
Staley, D. J. (2014). Brain, mind and Internet: A deep history and future. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Stocking, G. W. (1987). Victorian anthropology. New York: Free Press.
Stocking, G. W. (1995). After Tylor: British social anthropology, 1888–1951. Madison: University of Wisconsin.
Topik, S., & Pomeranz, K. (2012). The world trade created: Society, culture, and the world economy, 1400 to the present (3 ed.). London: Routledge.
Vedantam, S. (2005)no bias: Many Americans believe they are not prejudiced. Now a new test provides powerful evidence that a majority of us really are. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27067-2005Jan21_2.html. Accessed 11 Feb 2015.
Vidal, F. (2009). Brainhood, anthropological figure of modernity. History of the Human Sciences, 22(1), 5–36.
Wilson, M. (2006). 50 shots fired, and the experts offer a theory. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/27/nyregion/27fire.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0. Accessed 6 June 2015.
Wolin, S. S. (2004). Politics and vision: Continuity and innovation in Western political thought (2 ed.). Princeton/Oxford: Princeton University Press.
Wolin, S. S. (2008). Democracy incorporated: Managed democracy and the specter of inverted totalitarianism. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Young, R. M. (1985). Darwin’s metaphor: Nature’s place in Victorian culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2016 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Casper, S.T. (2016). The Political Without Guarantees: Contagious Police Shootings, Neuroscientific Cultural Imaginaries, and Neuroscientific Futures. In: Nixon, K., Servitje, L. (eds) Endemic. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-52141-5_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-52141-5_8
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-52140-8
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-52141-5
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)