[Commlist] New Book: The Public Brain

New book, "The Public Brain: Ideology and the Neuroscientific Turn from 
the Polis to Platforms", published this month with Bloomsbury.

https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/public-brain-9781786616043/


Joss Hands connects historical understandings of the brain with the 
histories of politics and democracy to address contemporary concerns 
about social media, democratic collapse, and technological control.

The Public Brain explores how politics and the public sphere have been 
understood in different societies and eras, in light of the prevailing 
conception of the brain in each period-particularly how the brain's 
capacities and characteristics have been used to justify the dominant 
political ideology of the time. Moving from the birth of democracy 
through the age of reason and revolution to the current social media era 
of “nudge” politics and new forms of political extremism, the book 
traces the triangulation of brain, public, and media. This includes an 
exploration of the role of social media platforms and their contribution 
to confusion and obfuscation in the present era. It proposes different 
formulations of the “public brain” across these periods, concluding with 
an argument for a democratic public brain.

The book examines what has largely been overlooked in this field, 
unpacking this history to offer valuable insights into contemporary 
debates surrounding issues such as neoliberalism, self-help and 
wellbeing as forms of ideology and control, the rise of extremist 
proto-fascist politics, and the phenomenon of post-truth. It unpacks 
arguments about affect and cognitive overload to make a positive case 
for the continuing power of reason and its emancipatory potential. In 
doing so, the book provides a valuable perspective on how we have come 
to view the brain as we do, and how that can often be a misuse, and 
suggests ways to cultivate an enriched, democratic concept of the public 
brain for positive social change.




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