Fernando Vidal and Francisco Ortega’s Being Brains: Making the Cerebral Subject is a fine-grained account of the “neuro-” in a range of disciplines, and, importantly––crucially––, takes stock of the history and scope of this prefix.  But more than this the book is an exploration, a critical engagement with the surge of brain-centered approaches to behavior, to physiology, to mind, to subjectivity, to art and creative enterprises and products––Being Brains is an invaluable appraisal of where those waves (many waves, different waves) crash and what they at times wash away.   Vidal and Ortega ask (simply, provocatively), “How did the idea that humans are essentially their brains become thinkable?” (1)

The commentaries that follow offer broad and diverse readings of the book.  We hope you enjoy.

Genealogy of the Cerebral Subject
Elizabeth Lunbeck
Harvard University

All of the Other Brains
Chloe Silverman
Drexel University

Historicizing the Brain
Martyn Pickersgill
University of Edinburgh

Knowledge about the Brain and Societal Interests
Frank W. Stahnisch
University of Calgary

A Reply:
The Neuro: Modernity, Community, and Critique
Fernando Vidal and Francisco Ortega

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