Neuropolitics: Thinking, Culture, Speed

1. Neuropolitics: Thinking, Culture, Speed William E. Connolly Presentation by Katrina Newsom

2. Neuropolitics:The politics through which cultural life mixes into the composition of body/brain process (vice versa). Overview: Thus, this book explores the ubiquity of the brain/body/culture dynamics within the processes of thinking. Connolly furthers the discourse of this dynamic by intersecting it with judgment and ethics, various dimensions of culture, and the concept of speed as it relates to democracy and cosmopolitanism.

3. My engagement of this text: • Connolly wrestles with the idea of reducibility and reason as the formulation in which thinking, culture and ethics are engaged. By challenging the concepts of being and transcendentalism, Connolly brings a new texture to thinking , culture and ethics – through the politics of becoming.

4. The Body/Brain Culture Network: • Connolly cites several authors and researchers such as V.S. Ramachandran and Antonio Damasio to develop his argument of the body/brain/culture dynamics of thinking . He disputes the idea of the brain as analogous to the computer. "Many cognitive scientists are moving away from the calculative, information processing, and representational models of the mind (computer like image) to the understanding that the processes of the mind are influence by and thus influence culture. " • The brain possesses different nodules of different speed and capacity of cultural organizations that are linked together to several bodily zones creating series of relays and feedback loops operating together to give texture to memory, perception, thinking and judgment.

5. Visual Memory and Culture • Perception is set in action contexts and organized through complex mixtures of sensory encounter, virtual memory and bodily affect. Citing Henri Bergson and Antonio Damasio (dispositional rather than action), Connolly distinguished virtual memory from explicit memory recall. Explicit memory recall is a process too slow for action, therefore virtual memory is employed. Virtual memory is not the memory that is recalled, but a memory that resides under the threshold of deliberative thought. It is comprised of sheets of past that allow the action-oriented perception beneath the threshold of thought to chose the appropriate action of a given circumstance.

6. Visual Memory and Culturecont. • The action that is taken is influence by somatic markers that mixes nature and perception into the element of decision making. Once again, this maker is not deliberative but resides beneath the threshold of thought as it rapidly estimate the needed action in any given situation. Also, somatic marks taps into memories creating a visceral affect. • The definition of culture which has played a vital role in the physical markers that effects the body and perception are defined by Connolly as not just concepts, beliefs and practices (Walter Benn Michaels), but also multi-layers of distinctions and speeds, capacities and levels of linguistic complexity. Culture is textured with perception, memory, and judgment.

7. Connolly’s Politics of Becoming • Connolly explores Nietzsche and Kant's view of science and nature. Siding with Nietzsche, Connolly dispels the concept of the nature as something that can be possessed (theo-teleological) or explained (lawlike models). He agrees with Nietzsche and other immanent naturalist (Prigogine and Stengers) who accepts the element of unpredictability in the history of nature. Evolution is unstable as a historical and future determinant. According to Prigogine the evolution of the universe is yet becoming. • He further argues that nature itself is not complete. • Natural beings are also in the process of becoming cultures through language, ethics and artistic achievements.

8. Techniques of Thought • In several chapters, Connolly draws distinctions between Kant and Nietzche’s concept of thought and morals, nature and culture. He capitalizes on the (immanent naturalist’s) definition of thought and morals, nature and culture as a way to challenge the tools of reduction and reason that positions the concept of being in which one is to ascend. • Thinking and ethics are not always deliberative, but are part of the body/brain/cultural dynamics. Because of this there are techniques that can be employed to change the thinking process and ethic sensibility. “Techniques and tactics applied to regions below direct intellectual control can sometimes reorganize dispositions to perception, feeling and judgment.” This argument challenges cultural and political theorist who “on some degree or another believe that ethics and politics are reducible to deliberative rational, modes of manipulation or behavior management.” • Cultural rituals, discipline and arts of self-cultivation play a pivotal role in the techniques of thinking. These processes “infiltrate into the patterns of thinking, identity and ethic sensibility.”

9. Time and Democracy • Sheldon Wolin’s article “What Time is It? Slow-pace of time • Political time is slow and deliberative and thus, is unable to keep up with cultural and economic time. • It is a breeding ground for undemocratic thoughts and practices. • It gives individual time to think about where they are in the world in position to others with can create. • It festers in injuries, injustices, and hegemonies that have reigned under a singular ethos that marginalizes many.

10. Time and Democracy cont. • Connolly opposes the idea of slowing down time. He believes that speed compresses distance and because of this… Fast-Pace Time • Allows a more productive movement of democracy • Allows generous engagement of ethics • It welcomes pluralism

11. Time: The Idea of Becoming • Time is ambiguous - time is neither linear nor cyclical. • The past at one point was fugitive to the present, therefore he is concern with the idea of nostalgia of the past. • Time is not fully determined by the past. • Moments of rifts in time helps to foster the idea of an unpredictable future. • He believes that like culture, thinking and ethics, time is becoming. • “For the future is never what it used to be neither is the past.