Mind Reading as a Cultural Practice

This book provides a genealogical perspective on various forms of mind reading in different settings. We understand mind reading in a broad sense as the twentieth-century attempt to generate knowledge of what people held in their minds – with a focus on scientifically-based governmental practices. This volume considers the techniques of mind reading within a wider perspective of discussions about technological innovation within neuroscience, the juridical system, “occult” practices and discourses within the wider field of parapsychology and magical beliefs. The authors address the practice of, and discourses on, mind reading as they form part of the consolidation of modern governmental techniques. The collected contributions explore the question of how these techniques have been epistemically formed, institutionalized, practiced, discussed, and how they have been used to shape forms of subjectivities – collectively through human consciousness or individually through the criminal, deviant, or spiritual subject. The first part of this book focuses on the technologies and media of mind reading, while the second part addresses practices of mind reading as they have been used within the juridical sphere. The volume is of interest to a broad scholarly readership dealing with topics in interdisciplinary fields such as the history of science, history of knowledge, cultural studies, and techniques of subjectivization.

Christian Kassung is Professor of Cultural Techniques and History of Knowledge at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany. He is vice director of the “Hermann von Helmholtz-Zentrum für Kulturtechnik” and Principal Investigator of the Cluster of Excellence “Matters of Activity”.Laurens Schlicht is Research Assistant at Institut für Romanische Kulturwissenschaft und Interkulturelle Kommunikation at Universität des Saarlandes, Germany. He has been Research Assistant for the project “Mind Reading as Cultural Practice”, funded by the German Research Foundation at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany.Carla Seemann is Research Assistant at Institut für Romanische Kulturwissenschaft und Interkulturelle Kommunikation at Universität des Saarlandes, Germany. She has been a Master’s Student at the Department of Cultural History and Theory at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany, and co-researcher on the project “Mind Reading as Cultural Practice”.