Smart Futures? Cosmetic Neurology in the Conquest for Time

• In Event: Moscone Center North Roundtable Session 4
  In Roundtable Session: Slow Curricula for Transformative Higher Education

Abstract

Objectives or purposes
In this paper, I argue against fast scholarship as it leads to many detrimental practices, such as the use of cognitive enhancement drugs, in favour of Slow scholarship, particularly as it relates to Open Distance Learning (ODL) or Open Distance elearning (OdeL) contexts, taking into consideration the complexity of working toward survivance (survival and resistance). In particular, I ask three questions: 1) What are the political implications of microdosing when it becomes an individualist responsibility in the managerialism of productivity and emotional capitalism?; 2) What does Slow scholarship look like in ODL/OdeL curricula while there is a strong drive towards fast scholarship through, for example, Massive open online courses (MOOCs), measured outcomes and outputs, and a digital relationality devoid of relations?; and 3) How does Slow scholarship contribute to survivance and curricula aimed at servicing the public good?

Perspective(s) or theoretical framework
In this paper, I critically examine the role of cognitive enhancing strategies in Higher Education, especially as these have, in some instances, become part and parcel of certain packagings of development. These, in turn, are tied to older narratives of progress that are complexly entangled in the anatomo-bio-necropolitics of algorithmic control societies and their sometimes subtle – and thus invisible – neo-eugenics agendas aimed at reinforcing neurotypicality, itself often imbricated in displacement, dispossession, death and decay.

Methods, techniques, or modes of inquiry
This paper draws on literature covering psychedelics, microdosing, and cognitive enhancement, especially in terms of the inextricability of soma and techne in their worldings. Moreover, it looks at ways in which Slow philosophy (Boulous Walker, 2016), Slow pedagogy (Berg & Seeber, 2016) and Slow scholarship (Bozalek, 2017) might be used in curricula-making.

Data sources, evidence, objects, or materials
This paper provides examples of Slow scholarship activities in curricula-making in ODL/OdeL contexts that counter the self-surveillance of the neoliberal university.

Results and/or substantiated conclusions or warrants for arguments/point of view
The microdosing of LSD and psilocybin are no longer used solely for therapeutic reasons, but are now being used as cognitive enhancing drugs, which raise questions with regard to the use of microdosing and its links to notions of development and neurotypicality. Understanding cognitive enhancement in these contexts, I argue, can help us create a politics worthy of the worlds we want to counter-actualise in and through curricula.


Scientific or scholarly significance of the study or work
This paper proposes methods of Slow scholarship aimed at disrupting individualist responsibility in the managerialism of productivity and emotional capitalism, especially in ODL/OdeL contexts where there is a strong drive towards fast scholarship through the curricula-making of MOOCs, measured outcomes and outputs, and a digital relationality devoid of relations.

Author

• Chantelle Gray, University of South Africa