The Neuro-Image by Pisters Patricia

Author:Pisters, Patricia
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 2012-03-11T05:00:00+00:00

PART 3

NEUROPOLITICS

Transnational Screen Connections

7

The Open Archive

CINEMA AS WORLD-MEMORY

Although I have already touched on the political dimensions of the neuro-image, especially in my discussion of affective resistance against the controlling forces of surveillance screens (in Chapter 3), in these final three chapters I address larger questions about the politics of the neuro-image. As a general preliminary remark I would like to emphasize that neuropolitics is not to be confused with politics in an ideological sense. Ideologies are an overarching aspect of the political, of course, but they are formed on the basis of all kinds of schizoid, “real illusionary,” and affective-aesthetic principles at work on our brain-screens, which involve micropolitical movements and are largely connected to (collective or individual) unconscious operations. Concurrently, these micropolitical movements are very much entangled with macropolitical and ideological forces. Therefore, to consider the political dimensions of the neuro-image, we must pursue a multilayered analysis of various political lines of forces that are at work simultaneously, taking into account the manifold levels on which images can operate in reality.1 I want also to emphasize that in discussing the political dimensions of the neuro-image, I certainly do not wish to imply that all things neuropolitical are simply “good,” let alone propose something like a neuronal ideology.2 The fundamental openness and dynamic character of the neuro-image allows a diversity of appropriations, adaptations, and operational strategies, good and bad, productive and counterproductive (these are precisely its schizoid characteristics). Nevertheless, coming to grips with some of these complex and mostly invisible dimensions of how images work on our brains, and how (consciously or unconsciously guiding our memories, perceptions, and actions) they operate in the world, is important if we are to disentangle their political dimensions.

I concur here with William Connolly, who, in his book Neuropolitics: Thinking, Speed, Culture, has addressed the complexity and speed of contemporary life in terms of what he calls a democracy of “deep pluralism” that is “nourished by a generous ethos of engagement” that recognizes first and foremost the micropolitical operations of our brains.3 Connolly identifies that in spite of the potentially negative aspects of “the accelerated pace of life, inscribed in public media, military weaponry, Internet communications, technological development, cinematic practice, air travel, population mobility, and cultural exchange,” these are the very same changes that are “indispensable to pluralization and democracy.”4 The up-tempo world will make people more fluid and creative, even if that creativity can also be used to reinforce state power or can create all kinds of fundamentalisms to pose blocks of fixed identities (as “safe havens”) in the sea of data, images, and possible ways of life. Neuropolitics is thus related to a micropolitics of the mind (both the individual and collective mind), macropolitical norms, institutions, ideologies, and strategies. It acknowledges many directions and dimensions at the same time (not just the ideologically “right” one). When elaborated within these political dimensions, our schizoanalysis of the neuro-image will point out both its creatively empowering and dangerous aspects.

Connolly, too, links neuroscience, cinema, and Deleuzian philosophy.

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