This book argues that neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, and behavioral economics often function as a political ideology masquerading as a new science. In looking at works by Antonio Damasio, Steven Pinker, Richard Thaler, Cas Sunstein, and John Tooby, Robert Samuels undertakes a close reading of the new brain sciences, and by turning to the works of Freud and Lacan, offers a counter-discourse to these new emerging sciences. He argues that an unintentional political manipulation of scientific thinking serves to repress the psychoanalytic conception of the unconscious and sexuality as it reinforces neoliberalism and promotes the drugging of discontent.
This innovative book is intended for those interested in science, psychoanalysis, and politics and offers a new definition of neoliberal subjectivity.
Table of Content
Chapter 1. Introduction.- Chapter 2. Damasio’s Error: The Politics of Biological Determinism after Freud.- Chapter 3. The Backlash Politics of Evolutionary Psychology: Pinker’s Blank Slate.- Chapter 4. Behavioral Economics: Nudge and Technocratic Liberalism.- Chapter 5. The Brain Sciences Against the Welfare State.- Chapter 6. Drugging Discontent: Psychoanalysis, Drives and the Governmental University Medical Pharmaceutical Complex (GUMP).- Chapter 7. Conclusion.
About the author
Robert Samuels has Ph Ds in English and Psychoanalysis. He teaches advanced writing at the University of California, Santa Barbara, USA. He is the author of eleven books including
Psychoanalyzing the Left and Right after Donald Trump and Educating Inequality (2016).
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