William Connolly is probably better
known to political theorists than psychologists and philosophers, most notably
perhaps for his work Identity/difference: democratic negotiations of
political paradox.  His new work on ‘neuropolitics’ is an interesting
attempt to try and combine something like a naturalistic model of the mind with
notions of political and social diversity.  This work, part of the continually
fascinating ‘Theory out of bounds’ series from Minnesota — Neuropolitics is
number 23 in the series — is essentially speculative and experimental and aims
to open up a realm of thought which views the mind as a site of manipulation
through technique.  It is also, Connolly states, a "continuation of two
recent studies, The ethos of pluralism and Why I am not a secularist" (p.xiii). 
The book begins with a number of epigraphs drawn from thinkers ranging from
Francisco Varela to Spinoza, with one of the most notable being the simple
slogan, drawn from the work of Gerald Edelman and Giulio Tonomi — "Neurons
that fire together wire together".  This simple neurophysiological
premise forms, as it were, a starting point for Connolly who aims to explore
quite what it might be to establish new patterns of firing and consequently
wiring.

Central to this notion is, of
course, the practice of learning and the role of habit, though Connolly talks
of the interface between creativity, composition and technique.  This might be
thought of as an investigation into how we can put together things we know in
new ways to enable fresh compositions that produce new effects, thereby
producing a technics or pragmatics of thought in relation to ethics and
politics.  It is, of course, the ethical and political that concerns Connolly
most, not a specialized or scientific set of questions relating to the mind or
consciousness.  Whilst this means the book is light on scientific evidence and
details it does mean that the ‘human side’ comes to the fore.  This relies no
doubt on something akin to Aristotle’s definition of man as ‘zoon politikon‘
— as an essentially political creature — but does so in a way that is fresh
and invigorating, with Connolly often offering himself and his practices as an
example.  It is clear that the emphasis is on politics as an ‘art of the self’
and in this respect the figure of Foucault looms in the background.

Connolly’s work shares its title
with the famous text by Timothy Leary from the 1970’s.  Leary posits an ‘exo-psychology’,
building on ideas from McLuhan, in which information technology forms a sort of
‘electronic nervous system’. Whilst Leary opens up the possibilities of a
Utopian renewal of democracy through the role of the PC and the Internet and in
the process constructs a discourse rejected by the bulk of the academic
community as belonging to the fringes of intellectual culture, Connolly focuses
on the intimate constructed layering of our selves and the implications of this
constructed notion of the self for modern democracy. His essentially constructivist
position is not unique by any means, even with the emphasis on the political
implications. What it does do, however, is present the constructivist case in a
fresh, personal and invigorating way with a strong materialist emphasis,
enabling a scientific materialism to be articulated in such a way that it plays
a positive explanatory role in the account given of the subjective experience
and ‘raw feels’ emphasized by those who want to hang onto some unknown and
perhaps unknowable notion of consciousness. It thus cuts across a notion of an
‘explanatory gap’ or the so-called ‘hard problem of consciousness’ in its
attempt to deliver a coherent, layered account of brain, mind and subject.

It does this, though, through the
use of practical reason and the discussion of examples.  As mentioned already,
the personal is political in Connolly and he makes ample use of a plethora of
concrete issues of everyday life.  He also involves numerous films and
contemporary political theorists in his discussion.  This gives a strong
impression of being engaged in a dialogue, which enhances the call for
pluralism and dialogue at the heart of the book.  In one sense, of course, the
very model that Connolly is using — of an adaptive, evolutionary and
naturalistic mind-body-society complex — is presupposed.  It is not his task,
however, to philosophically ground this model in an abstract way but rather to
try and develop an explanatory account based on that model and applied to the
contemporary culture.  This provides both the main interest and major weakness
of Connolly’s work.  As a political theorist’s articulation of a pluralism
based on a naturalistic framework it works and works well, but as a
philosophical or scientific exploration of the nature of the mind-body-society
complex it is hostage to fortune in a number of places.  This, not the least,
because the sort of naturalism that Connoly uses is a constructivist
naturalism, one in which things become naturalized and which thus
enables us to review the process of naturalization of specific social practices
as a way of liberating ourselves from the deterministic element of naturalism.

Most critical perhaps is Connoly’s
final confrontation of the work, where he attempts to defend pluralism from
Kant and modern neo-Kantians clustered around the work of people like Martha
Nussbaum.  Here he tries to articulate an interesting idea of ‘transcendental
blackmail’, which he diagnoses as at the heart of the Kantians attempt to
enforce a moral universal.  The blackmail consists of pinning people on the
dilemma of either accepting a moral law derived from my own core beliefs as
‘apodictic’ in terms of practical reason (‘it just is wrong’) or "I
will convict you of inconsistency or a lack of compassion" (p.199). 
For Connolly this fails utterly to deal with what he calls the plurality of
ethical sources.  Yet the issue for many Kantians would not be so clearly
centered on the question of universalization versus plurality, rather the
philosophical issue is precisely between a naturalistic or genealogical account
of morals and a normative account.  Connolly is still liable to be ignored by
those who reject the naturalistic.  If you don’t ignore him, however, he brings
to the fore a liberal and plural account of mind-body-society that is fascinating,
well-written and intensely human in its aspirations.

© 2005 Matt Lee

Matt
Lee, University Of Sussex (PhD researcher, Philosophy)

Categories: Philosophical