Jason Tougaw
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780300221176
- eISBN:
- 9780300235609
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300221176.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
The Elusive Brain is the first comprehensive survey of contemporary literature’s engagement with neuroscience. Jason Tougaw analyzes the works of contemporary writers—including Oliver Sacks, Temple ...
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The Elusive Brain is the first comprehensive survey of contemporary literature’s engagement with neuroscience. Jason Tougaw analyzes the works of contemporary writers—including Oliver Sacks, Temple Grandin, Richard Powers, Maud Casey, Jonathan Lethem, Tito Rajarshi Mukhopadhyay, and Siri Hustvedt, Ellen Forney, and David B.—arguing that their experiments with literary form offer a necessary counterbalance to a wider cultural neuromania that seeks out purely neural explanations for human behaviors as varied as reading, economics, empathy, and racism. Tougaw surveys memoirs about life with autism, epilepsy manic depression, or brain injury; revisionist mystery novels; and graphic narratives that engage neuroscience. The book argues that these works offer insight about how it feels and what it means to live with a brain whose role in the making of self or consciousness is far from fully understood. Brain memoirs and neuronovels revel in the mysteries of the explanatory gap between brain physiology and mental experience. In the process, these literary works offer an antidote to polarizing and outmoded debates about the “cerebral subject,” whether we are our brains (or not our brains). Rather than engaging in abstract philosophical debate, these literary works explore questions about neurodiversity politics and the stakes of rapidly advancing brain research for people whose experience represent what critic Ralph Savarese calls “all manner of neurologies.” Less
The Elusive Brain is the first comprehensive survey of contemporary literature’s engagement with neuroscience. Jason Tougaw analyzes the works of contemporary writers—including Oliver Sacks, Temple Grandin, Richard Powers, Maud Casey, Jonathan Lethem, Tito Rajarshi Mukhopadhyay, and Siri Hustvedt, Ellen Forney, and David B.—arguing that their experiments with literary form offer a necessary counterbalance to a wider cultural neuromania that seeks out purely neural explanations for human behaviors as varied as reading, economics, empathy, and racism. Tougaw surveys memoirs about life with autism, epilepsy manic depression, or brain injury; revisionist mystery novels; and graphic narratives that engage neuroscience. The book argues that these works offer insight about how it feels and what it means to live with a brain whose role in the making of self or consciousness is far from fully understood. Brain memoirs and neuronovels revel in the mysteries of the explanatory gap between brain physiology and mental experience. In the process, these literary works offer an antidote to polarizing and outmoded debates about the “cerebral subject,” whether we are our brains (or not our brains). Rather than engaging in abstract philosophical debate, these literary works explore questions about neurodiversity politics and the stakes of rapidly advancing brain research for people whose experience represent what critic Ralph Savarese calls “all manner of neurologies.”
Jason Tougaw
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780300221176
- eISBN:
- 9780300235609
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300221176.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
In this chapter, Tougaw argues that brain memoirs evolve from a long tradition of autobiographical writing that chronicles mind-body relationships and their implications for selfhood, including the ...
More
In this chapter, Tougaw argues that brain memoirs evolve from a long tradition of autobiographical writing that chronicles mind-body relationships and their implications for selfhood, including the work of Augustine, Montaigne, Thomas De Quincey, Marcel Proust, and Virginia Woolf. Broadly speaking, brain memoirs make at least five significant contributions to culture—in varying degrees for each particular memoir: 1) they enable their writers to gain a sense of agency or control in the face of the accidents that shape lives, including the accidents of genes, disease, or physical injury; 2) they offer much-needed solace and information to readers who suffer in ways similar to the writer as well as the loved ones and caretakers who support them; 3) they provide detailed, first-person accounts of neurological difference that have the potential to inform and influence brain research and clinical practice; 4) they renew and invigorate philosophical debates about mind and body, qualia, memory, and relationships between self and narrative; and 5) they develop narrative strategies for representing the complexities of the minds and bodies of their authors.Less
In this chapter, Tougaw argues that brain memoirs evolve from a long tradition of autobiographical writing that chronicles mind-body relationships and their implications for selfhood, including the work of Augustine, Montaigne, Thomas De Quincey, Marcel Proust, and Virginia Woolf. Broadly speaking, brain memoirs make at least five significant contributions to culture—in varying degrees for each particular memoir: 1) they enable their writers to gain a sense of agency or control in the face of the accidents that shape lives, including the accidents of genes, disease, or physical injury; 2) they offer much-needed solace and information to readers who suffer in ways similar to the writer as well as the loved ones and caretakers who support them; 3) they provide detailed, first-person accounts of neurological difference that have the potential to inform and influence brain research and clinical practice; 4) they renew and invigorate philosophical debates about mind and body, qualia, memory, and relationships between self and narrative; and 5) they develop narrative strategies for representing the complexities of the minds and bodies of their authors.
