The Ends of the Nervous System

Session Submission Type: Traditional (Closed) Panel

Abstract

The nervous system has long been seen as a mediating organ, warning the individual of external threats, tempting the individual with worldly pleasures; the nervous system depends upon the senses to bring the world into individual sensibility, and is thereby structured by sociotechnical environments and cultural value systems. Moreover, the nervous system is the basis of individual experience of the world, and might be seen as the primary mechanism through which social obligations, cultural expectations, and institutional demands are meted out; as an organ, it is intrinsic to the individual and dependent upon a world to mediate. And yet physicians and scientists often conceptualize the nervous system as a monadic, bounded, internal system, divorced even from other organ systems. But there have been other ways of conceptualizing the nervous system, including mid-20th century cybernetics, recent attention to the interrelation between the gut microbiome and cognition, anthropological descriptions of non-scopocentric sensory systems, and more recent experimentation with sense-integrating prosthetics that simulate touch. In this panel, we invite papers that interrogate the nervous system. What other models might be employed to conceptualize the nervous system and its fundamental role in mediating individual and group experiences of the world? How might the integration of these ways of conceptualizing the nervous system challenge how the body is configured in its relationships to the environment, other species, and technology? And how might reconceptualizing the nervous system enable new ways to think about the brain and its capacities, neurological disorders, aging, and intimacy?

Sub Unit

• 4S Annual Meeting

Chair

• Matthew Wolf-Meyer, Binghamton University

Discussant

• Victoria Pitts-Taylor, Wesleyan University

Individual Presentations

• Connectivity Itself, Or, How to Distribute Your Nervous System - Matthew Wolf-Meyer, Binghamton University

• The Case for Animal Electricity: Brains, Machines, and Electrical Ontologies - Caitlin Shure, Columbia University

• What Colour is the Brain? - Johanna Pokorny, University of Toronto

• The nervous system, senses, and signals in human and non-human environments - Stephanie Lloyd, Université Laval