TY - JOUR

T1 - Limitless? Imaginaries of cognitive enhancement and the labouring body

AU - Bloomfield, Brian

AU - Dale, Karen

N1 - The final, definitive version of this article has been published in the Journal, History of the Human Sciences, 33 (5), 2020, © SAGE Publications Ltd, 2019 by SAGE Publications Ltd at the History of the Human Sciences page: https://journals.sagepub.com/home/HHS on SAGE Journals Online: http://journals.sagepub.com/

PY - 2020/12/1

Y1 - 2020/12/1

N2 - This article seeks to situate pharmacological cognitive enhancement as part of a broader relationship between cultural understandings of the body-brain and the political economy. It is the body of the worker that forms the intersection of this relationship and through which it comes to be enacted and experienced. In this article, we investigate the imaginaries that both inform and are reproduced by representations of pharmacological cognitive enhancement, drawing on cultural sources such as newspaper articles and films, policy documents, and pharmaceutical marketing material to illustrate our argument. Through analysis of these diverse cultural sources, we argue that the use of pharmaceuticalshas come to be seen not only as a way to manage our brains, but through this asa means to manage our productive selves, and thereby to better manage the economy. We develop three analytical themes. First, we consider the cultural representations of the brain in connection with the idea of plasticity – captured most graphically in images of morphing - and the representation of enhancement as a desirable, inevitable, and almost painless process in which the mind-brain realizes its full potential and asserts its will over matter. Following this, we explore the social value accorded to productive employment and the contemporary (biopolitical) ethos of working on or managing oneself, particularlyin respect of improving one’s productive performance through cognitiveenhancement. Developing this, we elaborate a third theme by looking at the moulding of the worker’s productive body-brain in relation to the demands of the economic system.

AB - This article seeks to situate pharmacological cognitive enhancement as part of a broader relationship between cultural understandings of the body-brain and the political economy. It is the body of the worker that forms the intersection of this relationship and through which it comes to be enacted and experienced. In this article, we investigate the imaginaries that both inform and are reproduced by representations of pharmacological cognitive enhancement, drawing on cultural sources such as newspaper articles and films, policy documents, and pharmaceutical marketing material to illustrate our argument. Through analysis of these diverse cultural sources, we argue that the use of pharmaceuticalshas come to be seen not only as a way to manage our brains, but through this asa means to manage our productive selves, and thereby to better manage the economy. We develop three analytical themes. First, we consider the cultural representations of the brain in connection with the idea of plasticity – captured most graphically in images of morphing - and the representation of enhancement as a desirable, inevitable, and almost painless process in which the mind-brain realizes its full potential and asserts its will over matter. Following this, we explore the social value accorded to productive employment and the contemporary (biopolitical) ethos of working on or managing oneself, particularlyin respect of improving one’s productive performance through cognitiveenhancement. Developing this, we elaborate a third theme by looking at the moulding of the worker’s productive body-brain in relation to the demands of the economic system.

KW - biopolitics

KW - cognitive enhancement

KW - imaginaries

KW - ‘smart drugs’

KW - the productive body

U2 - 10.1177/0952695119888995

DO - 10.1177/0952695119888995

M3 - Journal article

VL - 33

SP - 37

EP - 63

JO - History of the Human Sciences

JF - History of the Human Sciences

SN - 0952-6951

IS - 5

ER -