Abstract
The cerebellum, so it would appear, must be celebrated. That is, the death of Psychological Man, deserves a party. This chapter critically engages with Brain Festivals, which offer their guests “An entertaining mix of scientific presentations, live brain dissection and workshops!” Distrusting such party mongers, I not only show the integral role of psychology and psychologists in such celebrations, but also attempt to corroborate an obscene kernel unwittingly structuring the festivities by highlighting some of the more morbid aspects of Brain Festivals. Furthermore, by drawing upon Guy Debord’s Society of the spectacle, Baudrillard’s second order iconoclasm, Lacan’s mirror stage and Freud’s Totem and taboo, I conclude that the celebrative drive in popularizing neuroscience is indicative of tendencies and underlying dynamics within regular academic neuroscience itself.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
http://www.breinwijzer.be/i-brain, my translation.
- 3.
- 4.
Of course, this enumeration refers to all the other chapters of this book.
- 5.
- 6.
As it is called in a Dutch neuro-educational project: see http://www.hetdolhuys.nl/bezoeker/europees-jaar-van-het-brein, my translation.
- 7.
Even critical approaches are obliged to pay their respect to the brain: blaming the media, popular (neuro)psychology, and so on, but sparing the thing itself as it is assessed by neuroscience.
- 8.
Of course, if Baudrillard’s conceptualisation of representation still risks being understood nostalgically as though at one point representations did refer to something real (as Karin Lesnik-Oberstein and Neil Cocks pointed out to me), my take on the matter is, of course, to interpret the Real in a Lacanian way, that is, the Real as the surplus or the excess of the Symbolic (as discussed in the previous chapters). When viewed in this way, Baudrillard’s attempt to speak of historical stages in which representations gradually lose their bond with the real should be criticised: although today’s iconoclasm reveals that “there is nothing to see” this does not mean that there was once something to see, there never was (here the nihil nove sub sole is a valid proposition). At the bare minimum, this means that reality only takes form in the symbolic; hence, any attempt to conceive of a reality beyond or prior to the symbolic and to denude the final truth is a road that takes us, as this chapter will demonstrate, to obscenities.
- 9.
- 10.
Although of course this is where it starts from, as the blurb of the book of Swaab states: “It aims to demystify the chemical and genetic workings of our most mysterious organ, in the process helping us to see who we are through an entirely new lens” (Swaab, 2014, blurb).
- 11.
It is this being fascinated by our own transparency, I argue, that sets my interpretation apart from Thomas Metzinger’s theory of the Phenomenal Self Model. According to Metzinger, the transparency of those brain processes constituting the representations of the self is constitutive of the self-model (Metzinger, 2003). In contrast to Metzinger, I argue that this very selflessness and transparency are not unknown to the subject, rather, they are a central part of our phenomenal self-experience, and, as the Brain Festivals show, exert a fascination over us (see also De Vos, 2015).
- 12.
- 13.
I am here paraphrasing Baudrillard’s use of Barbara Kruger “we shall be your favourite disappearing act” (Baudrillard, 1997, p. 15).
- 14.
- 15.
- 16.
Could one not argue that in this way, the rather coercive introduction of pupils into the brain sciences is a kind of initiation ritual, enforcing a secondary identification with each other via the primary identification with the scientific position?
- 17.
http://www.breinwijzer.be/mom4y/mom4y-doelstellingen, my translation.
- 18.
http://www.breinwijzer.be/mom4y, my translation.
- 19.
They are stated in general terms and thus do not concern the level of the universal, which envisions the Truth. See also, in this respect, my discussion about the objectives of neuroeducation in Chap. 2.
- 20.
http://www.breinwijzer.be/mom4y/mom4y-doelstellingen, my translation.
- 21.
The professed emancipatory goal of informing youngsters so that they can partake in the societal debate does not change the coordinates here: the neuro-educators position themselves as mere instruments of the greater plan of Science, in which educational outcomes are conceived of in very strict psychologising terms (targeting skills, effectiveness, personal development and so on).
- 22.
DANA is an international consortium of universities, pharmaceutical companies and NGOs that calls itself “a private philanthropic organization that supports brain research through grants, publications, and educational programs”. Testifying to the unperceived paradoxical turn of reflexivity within their own discourse, the following phrase (with which they promote their annual “brain awareness week”) is highly indicative: “celebrate a week of celebrating the brain” (http://www.dana.org/kids/).
- 23.
The photo can be found at: http://dana.org/uploadedImages/baw/Photo_Gallery/Gallery/2009/slide/Moravian%20College,%20Pennsylvania,%20United%20States_brain%20exhibition_sl.jpg Brain Awareness Week Gallery—2009.
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De Vos, J. (2016). The Celebrated Brain: The Role of the Brain in the Society of the Spectacle. In: The Metamorphoses of the Brain – Neurologisation and its Discontents. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-50557-6_6
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