The Neural Implantation: Cognitive Difference and Contemporary Culture S Meeks PhD 2020 The Neural Implantation: Cognitive Difference and Contemporary Culture Spencer Meeks A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the Manchester Metropolitan University for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of English Manchester Metropolitan University 2020 2 Table of Contents Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................. 4 Abstract .................................................................................................................................... 5 Context: The Neuro-turn .......................................................................................................... 6 Introduction: The Neural Implantation .................................................................................. 14 Theorising the Neuro-Turn ................................................................................................ 14 Neurochemical Selves ........................................................................................................ 17 Brainhood and History ....................................................................................................... 21 The Plastic Subject ............................................................................................................. 26 The Neuronovel ................................................................................................................. 37 Neuromodels and Neuronovels – Emerging Tensions? ..................................................... 42 Foucault’s Bodies and Subjects .......................................................................................... 49 The Perverse Implantation ................................................................................................. 54 The Neural Implantation .................................................................................................... 57 Neuro-Crime Fiction ........................................................................................................... 65 Chapter Summaries ............................................................................................................ 74 Chapter One: Pill-popping Narratives of Cognitive Enhancement ........................................ 80 Fictions of Enhancement ................................................................................................... 85 Limitless ............................................................................................................................. 93 Nexus ............................................................................................................................... 126 Chapter Two: The Shooter and the Hacker: Autism, Courtrooms, and Justice ................... 149 The Autistic Hacker .......................................................................................................... 153 The Autistic Shooter ......................................................................................................... 159 Autism (Re-)represented ................................................................................................. 167 House Rules ...................................................................................................................... 175 Autistic Retribution; Autistic Justice - Lisbeth Salander .................................................. 194 Autistic Retribution; Autistic Justice: The Code ............................................................... 206 Chapter Three: Sleuthing and Suspecting the Dementia Subject ........................................ 222 Figures and Fear ............................................................................................................... 230 Searching for the Plot ...................................................................................................... 238 Notes and Journals ........................................................................................................... 244 Elastic Bands or Pleistocene? ........................................................................................... 258 Maud and Jennifer: No Sense of an Ending? ................................................................... 265 Cut to Black? .................................................................................................................... 274 Conclusion: Neural Implantations Today and Tomorrow .................................................... 285 Bibliography ......................................................................................................................... 301 3 Acknowledgements Thank you to the Manchester Metropolitan for awarding me the Vice Chancellor Scholarship without which this research would not have been possible. Thanks to Dr Lucy Burke, my Director of Studies and Dr Paul Wake for supervising me during this lengthy process. There are too many other people who deserve thanks, they know who they are and I am grateful. But here I just want to thank my brilliant mum, Dawn Docherty. 4 Abstract This thesis seeks to explore the effects of the neuro-turn, which is the turn away from predominately psychological paradigms towards neuroscientific models and explanations of the self. Demarcating the beginning of this turn as the 1990s, dubbed the ‘decade of the brain’, the thesis is particularly concerned with exploring the effects of the neuro-turn on the people whose identity, subjectivity, and personhood come to be built or formed around these novel neuroscientific ways of understanding or measuring brains and cognition. In particular, the thesis considers people who are categorised, diagnosed, or believed to have cognitive difference, particularly salient in this neuro-turn in regards to the myriad brain diseases, disorders, syndromes, and conditions present today. Underpinned by a Foucauldian theoretical framework, particularly the description of the nineteenth century’s ‘perverse implantation’, this thesis develops the concept of the ‘neural implantation’ to describe the effects of this biopolitical drive to classify cognitive difference. It is particularly interested in how the generic properties of crime fiction can elucidate both the biopolitics of the neural implantation, as well as how these texts can be sites through which to resist some of the more problematic effects of the medicalisation and politicisation of cognitive difference. Beginning with the cultural fascination with cognitive enhancement, it seeks to understand the kinds of subjectivities ideas of enhancement produce through close readings of Neil Berger’s film Limitless and Ramez Naam’s novel Nexus. It argues that the recent shift away from neoliberal to populist forms of politics is reflected in these two texts, and show how the neural implantation they imagine encapsulates this. It continues with an exploration of autism in society and culture, arguing that implantations of autism can be divided into the polar figurations of the ‘autistic shooter’ and the ‘autistic hacker’. It looks at Jodi Picoult’s novel House Rules as indicative of the ‘shooter’, describing the reading of the narrative as a ‘feel bad’ experience, before shifting to representations of the hacker, through readings of the television series The Code and Stieg Larsson’s Millennium novel series. The thesis concludes with a discussion of dementia, arguing that the contemporary model seeks only to medically pathologise and culturally demonise people living with dementia. To combat this, the thesis adopts a psychoanalytic reading of Emma Healey’s Elizabeth is Missing and Alice LaPlante’s Turn of Mind, to show how society can begin to ‘read’ dementia differently, and moreover begin to learn what dementia and other cognitive differences can teach us about the limitations of the normative paradigm. 5 Context: The Neuro-turn In a 2017 BBC documentary titled ‘The Truth About…Stress’, presenter Fiona Phillips sets out to examine the effectiveness of mindfulness, a meditative practice designed to focus the self in the present with the aim, for some, of reducing stress. She remains sceptical of its health benefits until neuroscientist Elena Antonova explains the differences in brain scan images of the same person both when ‘mind-wandering’ and when practising mindfulness. [Phillips:] It’s all very well being told mindfulness works but I’m still a bit sceptical. I’ve come to the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology, and Neuroscience at King’s College London to find out what the science is behind it. […] [Antonova, pointing to a brain image:] This area… are the areas that we call self-referencing – it’s the me-me-me experience. […] [Phillips:] That’s incredible! The difference is stark! We’ve just got so much activity going on in the mind wandering brain, and yet barely any in the mindfulness brain. What effect would that have? Having less reaction in the frontal lobe? [Antonova:] The experience associated with this brain state is that sense of openness and clarity. […] [Phillips:] I would love to have that brain, the mindfulness one. […] Well, I have to say, I was a bit cynical about mindfulness at the beginning of the day, and now I am definitely a convert. I’ve seen the science!1 Having previously been told ‘mindfulness works’ by a group of high school children she describes herself as sceptical; however, after having been shown