ABOUT BRAINHOOD

Welcome to the BRAINHOOD site. This is the site of a network of scholars who share an interest in the rise and impact of a certain neuroscientific worldview in contemporary society; some of them have participated in the Brazil-Germany exchange program “The Cerebral Subject. Impact of the Neurosciences in Contemporary Society” (see PROBRAL).

To the extent that personhood is the quality or condition of being an individual person, we might call “brainhood” the quality or condition of being a brain. This property defines the “cerebral subject” that has become increasingly widespread since the mid-twentieth century. “Cerebral subject” designates not so much a “scientific object” as an anthropological figure – the human being as brain – with a great diversity of inscriptions, embodiments and crystallisations. Our common is to study this diversity, and to explore its concrete consequences in different realms of individual and collective practices and experiences.

This looks timely and important to me.