Larger than Our Biologies: Identity and Consciousness in Contemporary Fiction

"Neurocultures" offers "glimpses" into an expanding universe of knowledge, beliefs and practices characterized by the conviction that human activity is governed by the structure and functioning of the brain. The book explores this universe in a broad range of fields, including neuroethics, psychoanalysis, cinema and literature. The impact of "neuroculture" on contemporary literature is analyzed in "Larger than Our Biologies: Identity and Consciousness in Contemporary Fiction". Valeria Gennero's essay focuses the emergence of "cerebral subjectivity" as a crucial feature of postmodern culture (and as a plot device) in recent novels by Richard Powers, David Lodge and Jonathan Franzen.