The Public Brain: Ideology and the Neuroscientific Turn from the Polis to Platforms

About the Book

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.

Table of Contents:

1. Brain, Public, Ideology
2. Greece and the Polis Brain
3. Enlightenment and the Rational Brain
4. Liberalism and The Bourgeois Brain
5. Socialism and the Dialectical Brain
6. Neoliberalism and the Plastic Brain
7. The Digital Society and the Self-Care Brain
8. Platforms and the Populist Brain
9. The Public Brain
References
About the Author

About the Author :
Joss Hands is reader in critical theory at Newcastle University, UK. He teaches media, communications and cultural studies at Newcastle and is the author of two previous books, @ is For Activism: Dissent Resistance and Rebellion in a Digital Culture (2011), and Gadget Consciousness: Collective Thought, Will and Action in the Age of Social Media (2018).

Review :
Joss Hand’s brilliant examination of past and present conceptions of the brain, in their own times and contexts, creates a deep and searching examination of social media, brains, science and ideas of truth, falsity and misinformation. Hands gives us a way to confront dilemmas of brain, personality and society, offering insights into how we can make a better world. While some view the brain as mere tissue or as the seat of the soul, The Public Brain places it as both a scientific object and ideological construct. In a highly original account, Joss Hands weaves historical, philosophical, and political threads into a critical, timely narrative essential for neuroscience and political theory scholars. At a time when generative AI is being reductively presented as intelligent and the answer to all our ills, and some of its most active proponents and developers are connected with the shift from democracy to oligarchy, this becomes an exceedingly urgent book. Written in an eminently readable style while also taking us through a detailed history of the neuroscientific turn this is a very timely and welcome addition to the literature trying to make sense of our time.