Brain and Culture

This article explores a possible conflict between the practical and ethical implications of scientific and religious discourses about human nature proposed in the sci-fi series "Altered Carbon". It discusses the clash between biopolitically implemented technology and religious life. The scientific discourse is represented by the "ideology of the cer-ebral subject" (F. Vidal, F. Ortega), which establishes the connection between the brain and the self. A brief examination of examples of the representation of this ideology in science fiction and its general logic follows. The final development of neuroscience in this series is the technology of uploading the self onto a digital medium, which makes it possible to achieve a quasi-immortal state by changing bodies. This technology, biopolitically appropriated and introduced into individual lives by the state, conflicts with the religious life of Neo-Catholics who refuse to transfer their selves into another body after their bodily deaths. Thus, the field of collision between the interference of science inspired biopower into the life of the individual and his or her religious life is marked by the coordinates of life and death. The article discusses this fundamental collision, its biopolitical background, and its implications.