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Psychoanalyzing the Politics of the New Brain Sciences

  • Book
  • © 2017

Overview

Authors:
  1. Robert Samuels

    1. UCSB, Goleta, CA, USA

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  • Relates Neoliberalism to the new brain sciences and psychoanalysis
  • Articulates the formation of the Governmental University Medical Pharmaceutical complex
  • Offers a new perspective on contemporary economics and politics

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Table of contents (7 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-vii
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  2. Introduction

    • Robert Samuels
    Pages 1-7

  3. Damasio’s Error: The Politics of Biological Determinism After Freud

    • Robert Samuels
    Pages 9-33

  4. The Backlash Politics of Evolutionary Psychology: Steven Pinker’s Blank Slate

    • Robert Samuels
    Pages 35-58

  5. Behavioral Economics: Nudge and Technocratic Liberalism

    • Robert Samuels
    Pages 59-83

  6. The Brain Sciences Against the Welfare State

    • Robert Samuels
    Pages 85-114

  7. Drugging Discontent: Psychoanalysis, Drives, and the Governmental University Medical Pharmaceutical Complex (GUMP)

    • Robert Samuels
    Pages 115-136

  8. Conclusion

    • Robert Samuels
    Pages 137-139

  9. Back Matter

    Pages 141-143
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Keywords

About this book

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.









Authors and Affiliations

  • UCSB, Goleta, CA, USA

    Robert Samuels

About the author

Robert Samuels has PhDs 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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