TY - JOUR

T1 - Target America

T2 - visual culture, neuroimaging and the “hijacked brain” theory of addiction

AU - Hickman, Timothy

PY - 2014/2/1

Y1 - 2014/2/1

N2 - The ‘hijacked brain theory’ currently dominates both popular and scientific thinking about addiction, supported by the extensive dissemination of visual evidence produced by digital brain scanning technologies. This essay places this most recent attempt to ‘see’ addiction into its broader historical context by looking at the visual means scientists, bureaucrats and politicians have used to explain their ideas about the condition. In doing so, the essay offers a critical perspective on a logic that creates narrative sense out of the visual evidence offered by brain scan images. Further, the metaphor of hijacking, is far from an innocent choice in post-September 11 America. The essay therefore examines a second, closely related, body of visual evidence: installations and exhibits from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s exhibition, ‘Target America: Terrorists, Traffickers and You.’ This essay concludes that recent findings in the neuroscience of addiction—particularly the theory of the ‘hijacked brain’—are very much embedded in the broader cultural and political history that helped to produce them.

AB - The ‘hijacked brain theory’ currently dominates both popular and scientific thinking about addiction, supported by the extensive dissemination of visual evidence produced by digital brain scanning technologies. This essay places this most recent attempt to ‘see’ addiction into its broader historical context by looking at the visual means scientists, bureaucrats and politicians have used to explain their ideas about the condition. In doing so, the essay offers a critical perspective on a logic that creates narrative sense out of the visual evidence offered by brain scan images. Further, the metaphor of hijacking, is far from an innocent choice in post-September 11 America. The essay therefore examines a second, closely related, body of visual evidence: installations and exhibits from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s exhibition, ‘Target America: Terrorists, Traffickers and You.’ This essay concludes that recent findings in the neuroscience of addiction—particularly the theory of the ‘hijacked brain’—are very much embedded in the broader cultural and political history that helped to produce them.

KW - Addiction

KW - Neuroimaging

KW - visual culture

U2 - 10.1093/pastj/gtt021

DO - 10.1093/pastj/gtt021

M3 - Journal article

VL - 222

SP - 207

EP - 226

JO - Past and Present

JF - Past and Present

SN - 0031-2746

IS - Suppl. 9

ER -