Examining neuronal-mental continuity within neuroscience can expose political assumptions and disrupt flexibility

Evidence

Logically, how are we to explain what relation could exist between such a study and the political, social, and economic questions raised above? The answer is the following: interrogating the transition from the neuronal to the mental leads us to interrogate the very core of cerebral functioning, the transition from the biological to the cultural, from the strictly natural base of the mind to its historical—and thus also, necessarily, its political and social—dimension. Reinvestigating the question of the transition from the neuronal to the political within the field of the neuronal itself should allow us, through a strategy of redoubling, to bring out the theoretical mediations, transitions, indeed, the theoretical holes likely to unsettle the very concept of continuity, and in so doing to perturb flexibility. — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 185

Logically, how are we to explain what relation could exist between such a study and the political, social, and economic questions raised above? The answer is the following: interrogating the transition from the neuronal to the mental leads us to interrogate the very core of cerebral functioning, the transition from the biological to the cultural, from the strictly natural base of the mind to its historical—and thus also, necessarily, its political and social—dimension. Reinvestigating the question of the transition from the neuronal to the political within the field of the neuronal itself should allow us, through a strategy of redoubling, to bring out the theoretical mediations, transitions, indeed, the theoretical holes likely to unsettle the very concept of continuity, and in so doing to perturb flexibility. We shall thereby be able to grasp the distinction between what is truly liberating in this new definition of self and what within it remains a subjugating power. This ”weighing in the balance” will require a critical confrontation between flexibility and plasticity. — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 185

Categorization

• QUESTION: Worth chasing: does Malabou actually deliver on this ‘redoubling’ strategy, and does she ever name the theoretical holes concretely?
• DEFINE: Marks the chapter’s core move: contrasting liberating versus subjugating potentials within the new neuronal self-definition, anchored in the flexibility/plasticity distinction.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 185