Abstract
Neuroscience may be read as part of a historical search for an integrative and agentive centre. The prefrontal cortices, the dominant locus of the executive functions, which includes the control of cognitive processes and the regulation of self in the process of fulfilling intentions, is currently such a centre. This attribution is complexified through a deconstructive reading of texts by the neuropsychologist Elkhonon Goldberg. What emerge are dynamics that decentre attempts to determine a point from which agency may proceed. It is argued that the grounds for centric claims simultaneously undermine such ambitions.
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Notes
Page numbers with no indication of author or date refer to Goldberg's 2001 text. Extensive use is made of quotes so as to ground claims and arguments.
‘[M]y understanding of the brain … has always been informed by the early intellectual encounter with the concept of the neural net’ (Goldberg, 1990, p. 229).
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Acknowledgements
This article draws from a doctorate completed via the University of South Africa. Funding and other support received from Rhodes University and the National Research Foundation assisted in its completion.
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van Ommen, C., van Deventer, V. The economy of centre within the aneconomy of neurological architecture. Subjectivity 4, 258–276 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1057/sub.2011.14
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/sub.2011.14