Defiling Subjectivities

This blog examines media coverage and representation pertaining to subjectivity and the "psy-disciplines" (psychiatry, psychology, and psychoanalysis). What are the effects of proliferating mental health discourse and practices? Does there exist a politics of "therapy," "health," and "well-being?" Where is the subject - the self - in the multiplicity of mental health practices today?

Mar 08 2013	Neurotypicality and The Cartography of the Mind
Several years ago I read a book entitled The Physics of Star Trek. My memory of it is vague, but I can say with confidence that the chapter that fascinated me the most was on Star Trek's relationship to matter: transporting, warp drive, and the holodeck. In other words, vaporizing humans and reassembling them at a chosen geographical location, traveling one-to-nine times the speed of light, and virtual reality programs.

Mar 08 2013

Neurotypicality and The Cartography of the Mind

Several years ago I read a book entitled The Physics of Star Trek. My memory of it is vague, but I can say with confidence that the chapter that fascinated me the most was on Star Trek's relationship to matter: transporting, warp drive, and the holodeck. In other words, vaporizing humans and reassembling them at a chosen geographical location, traveling one-to-nine times the speed of light, and virtual reality programs.

Mar 08 2013	Curiousities Primed for Scientistic Discourse
A piece entitled 'Primed for Controversy' appeared in the February 23rd New York Times. Written by a psychiatric scholar known for her critique of 'therapy culture' and forthcoming critical appraisal of the popular appeal of neuroscience, it discusses how one of one of psychology's most popular and captivating findings - the effects of 'priming' - has come to be widely disputed.

Mar 06 2013	The Use of Mental and Physical Illness
These categories tell you something about the way in which sophisticated human beings think, but it is doubtful they tell you anything about the things themselves. -Wilfred Bion

Oct 31 2012	Propagandizing the Unconscious, Marketing to System 1
As neuroscience colonizes and merges with academic disciplines we are seeing a revisitation of many former bodies of knowledge clothed in scientific language "New" and "progressive" research rediscovers information that has already been produced, and its apparatuses of verification (spectacular technology, medico-scientific jargon) "permit" the older knowledge to be revitalized. In its "original form" the former knowledge remains repressed, yet finds a way to surface in a new cultural milieu: in the case of neuroscience (and the other psy-disciplines) maintaining the illusion of progress and science as a politically loaded entity.

Oct 31 2012

Propagandizing the Unconscious, Marketing to System 1

As neuroscience colonizes and merges with academic disciplines we are seeing a revisitation of many former bodies of knowledge clothed in scientific language "New" and "progressive" research rediscovers information that has already been produced, and its apparatuses of verification (spectacular technology, medico-scientific jargon) "permit" the older knowledge to be revitalized. In its "original form" the former knowledge remains repressed, yet finds a way to surface in a new cultural milieu: in the case of neuroscience (and the other psy-disciplines) maintaining the illusion of progress and science as a politically loaded entity.

Oct 30 2012	Seeing it All: Neuroscience and Popular Perception
"I don't know how to tell you the secret, but the secret is beautiful, and science, our science, seems mere frivolity to me now." -Borges

Oct 30 2012

Seeing it All: Neuroscience and Popular Perception

"I don't know how to tell you the secret, but the secret is beautiful, and science, our science, seems mere frivolity to me now." -Borges

Apr 14 2012	Mechanisms of Growth and Financialization
In order to connect and extend the processes outlined in

Apr 12 2012	An Overview of Banking, Knowledge-Bearing, and Opacity
In my next series of posts I would like to examine the role of banks and financial institutions in the United States.

Apr 11 2012	The Emergence, Part 2: Debt-Driven Growth, Financial Colonization, and Speculation/Debt Reciprocity
(This is the second post in a series on the rise of finance capital in the United States, for Part 1, click here.)

Apr 11 2012

The Emergence, Part 2: Debt-Driven Growth, Financial Colonization, and Speculation/Debt Reciprocity

(This is the second post in a series on the rise of finance capital in the United States, for Part 1, click here.)

Feb 28 2012	The Emergence of the Hegemony, Part 1
(This is the second post in a series on the rise of finance capital in the United States, for part 2, click here)

Feb 28 2012

The Emergence of the Hegemony, Part 1

(This is the second post in a series on the rise of finance capital in the United States, for part 2, click here)