Rhetoric and the Neurosciences: Engagement and Exploration (original) (raw)
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This course examines the expansion and proliferation of the neurosciences from the early modern period to the present. We will investigate the recent claim that we are living in the midst of a "neuro-revolution" with vast social, political, and economic consequences around the globe. Yet at the same time, we will look to the past for similar moments of transition and transformation of the modern sciences abetted by experiments on the nervous system. Students will analyze texts from Descartes to Damasio, paying attention to the rhetorical explanatory power of certain epistemic objects and instruments--samples of brain tissue, synaptic networks, clinical case histories, MRI scans--as well as the institutional power-shifts that sanctioned research practices such as vivisection, phrenology, electrophysiology, and functional imaging. Through our reading of primary sources by philosophers and physicians and secondary sources by historians and sociologists, this course will explore what is at stake in the "neuro-turn," and why it provokes such a mixed reaction of hope and hype, then as well as now.
Through the Looking Glass: Past Futures of Brain Research
Medicine Studies, 2009
The neurosciences seem to thrive on the constantly postponed promise to herald a definitive understanding of the human mind. What are the dynamics of this promise and its postponement? The long and fascinating history of the neurosciences offers ample material for looking into the articulation of neuroscientific research and contemporary culture. New tools and research methods, often announced as breakthroughs, brought along new representations of brain activity. In addition, they shaped the way of conceptualizing the brain's mode of operation even where they failed to meet the high expectations initially kindled. Rather than arriving at a definitive and final understanding of human nature by solving the riddle of the human brain, the neurosciences appear to operate as active interfaces mobilizing human societies to ever new research endeavors.
The Routledge Companion to Victorian Literature, 2019