The Nervous System

How do states of emergency come to be shared and felt? What are the circuits of perception, attention, and sensory experience that produce a collective anxiety and fear? How is the biological nervous system in part a psychosocial mechanism, linking the individual to the collective via feelings, affects, anticipations? This seminar explores writers (across critical theory, ethnography, and history) that directly engage public agitation about collective conditions. It will explore how mass mediation and the ongoing revolution in information technologies extend and amplify older systems of psychosocial mobilization and recruitment, creating new circuits of attentional capture.

ANTH 43006 | CCCT 43006