Argues that neuroscience and information theory have reshaped understandings of the social, framing individuals as discrete components of a communication machine, and illustrates this through the author's own experience of paranoia in an MRI scanner.
Abstract
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2021. Pp. xv + 426. Paper $32.50. “In the MRI I experienced the invisible tendrils of discourse…a particularly powerful construction of the social. For in the MRI I became aware of my paranoia, mindful of how theories of information, feedback, and self-organization…frame the social as comprised of discrete individuals in a giant communication machine” (20). So begins John Modern's journey in Neuromatic. I felt an immediate kinship. I start my book Biblical Porn (2018) with a field tale that details paranoia generated by entanglements of brain, body, technology, and world while sitting alone at my laptop.