Cerebral Subject

"Performing Brains on Screen" deals with film enactments and representations of the belief that human beings are essentially their brains, a belief that embodies one of the most influential modern ways of understanding the human. Films have performed brains in two chief ways: by turning physical brains into protagonists, as in the “brain movies” of the 1950, which show terrestrial or extra-terrestrial disembodied brains carrying out their evil intentions; or by giving brains that remain unseen inside someone’s head an explicitly major role, as in brain transplantation films or their successors since the 1980s, in which brain contents are transferred and manipulated by means of information technology. Through an analysis of filmic genres and particular movies, "Performing Brains on Screen" documents this neglected filmic universe, and demonstrates how the cinema has functioned as a cultural space where a core notion of the contemporary world has been rehearsed and problematized.

Synopsis Thèse de doctorat ès sciences socales -Université de Lausanne (2012) Vincent Pidoux ([email protected] / @PidouxV) Cerveaux, sujets et maladies. Contribution à une épistémologie historique de l'étude de l'activité cérébrale en psychiatrie Depuis la Décennie du cerveau, proclamée en 1990 aux Etats--Unis et en 1993 en Suisse,

Статья посвящена исследованию предлагаемого научно-фантастическим сериалом «Видоизмененный углерод» кейса возможного конфликта между практическими и этическими импликациями научного и религиозного дискурсов о природе человека. В частности, речь идет о столкновении биополитически присвоенной и внедренной технологии и религиозной жизни. Научный дискурс представлен «идеологией церебрального субъекта» (Ф. Видаль, Ф. Ортега), устанавливающей связь между мозгом и личностью. Кратко разбираются примеры воплощения этой идеологии в научной фантастике и ее общая логика. «Логичным итогом» в данном случае является технология загрузки сознания на цифровой носитель, позволяющая отвязать смерть индивида от телесной смерти и добиться квазибессмертия путем смены тел. Эта технология, биополитически присвоенная и внедренная государством, вступает в конфликт с религиозной жизнью неокатоликов, отказывающихся переносить сознание после телесной смерти в другое тело. Таким образом, поле столкновения вмешательства сциентизированной биовласти в жизнь индивида и его религиозной жизни размечается координатами жизни и смерти. В статье рассмотрена механика столкновения, его биополитическая подоплека и импликации.

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.

This article explores the poetics of the neuromolecular gaze in Bart Koubaa's 2007 novel Het gebied van Nevski and James Cameron's 2009 film Avatar. It considers the novel and the film as artistic reflections of contemporary neuroculture and argues that they both employ their central metaphorsthe brain as battlefield and the brain as networkin such a way that the same basic principles seem to return on various levels of biological and social existence: the micro-level of nerve cells and synapses, the meso-level of individual brains and human beings and the macro-level of historical events and socio-political interaction. In doing so, the novel and the film both suggest a natural continuity between the neurobiological and the social that closely resembles manifestations of the 'neuromolecular gaze' (Rose/Abi-Rached) in contemporary science and neuroculture at large. Significantly, however, these poetic extrapolations of neuromolecular knowledge to personal identity and society do not lead to a homogeneous and reductionist view of the 'cerebral subject' (F. Vidal) but to quite diverse, ambiguous and contradictory interpretations of what it means 'to be one's brain'.

Since the 1990s, several disciplines have emerged at the interface between neuroscience and the social and human sciences. For the most part, they aim at capturing the commonalities that underlay the heterogeneity of human behaviors and experiences. Neuroanthropology and cultural neuroscience, or the "neurodisciplines of culture," appear different, since their goal is to understand specificity rather than commonality and to address how cultural differences are inscribed in the brain. After offering an overview of these disciplines, and of their relation to endeavors such as cultural psychology and social neuroscience, this article discusses some of the most representative studies in the area in order to explore in which ways they are relevant for an understanding of culture.

Depuis la Décennie du cerveau des années 1990, un "tournant neuroscientifique" affecte le monde contemporain à l'échelle mondiale. Les neurosciences semblent s'imposer comme le meilleur moyen de comprendre l'être humain et promettent de fournir la clé des phénomènes les plus divers. Des expériences sensorielles les plus élémentaires aux créations culturelles les plus complexes, l'être humain est devenu un "sujet cérébral." Quelle est la portée de cette prétendue révolution qui annonce un "nouvel humanisme" et des transformations radicales dans nos façons d'aborder la morale, l'éducation ou la justice  Le présent article explore cette questionà partir du tournant neuroscientifique au sein des sciences humaines et sociales.