“For, as so many ethnographic studies of laboratory life have shown, the laboratory is not a ‘non-space’: it is itself a real configuration of persons, devices, and techniques, which imposes its own characteristics on the data generated, as well as the interpretations made of them, and all the more so when the subjects are individual living creatures, be they human or other animals” (Rose & Abi-Rached 228).

This about sums up how my views of laboratory science have been changed. Laboratories are not a blank white page that – well, here is a poem:

LABORATORY

white lab coats and

beakers.

that’s what I see

in laboratory.

what have those

white coats done…

in experimenting on the brain?

the brain was like a spirit

before I could see

that experimenting

is precise

it is not a game

(or at least it shouldn’t be).

Now I understand what

laboratory

means.

Because even

a blank

white page

is still made

of something.

 

“This individualized inwardness, with its interiority and its continuity, is both unique to each and common to all (it was not always so, consider slaves, women, ‘primatives’, children, idiots, the mad): it grounds the claim of each individual to membership in the human race and to the consideration that such membership implies” (Rose & Abi-Rached 202).

As a drift myself inward in reverie, I dream of revelry.

This dream consists of me

encapsulated in a crowd

clinking glasses

confetti

in celebration of

…who cares.

It’s just a party.

No one can see me.

Most dreams are like this one.

I can see everything,

but no one pays any attention

to my body taking up space.

It’s like being high

without the daze.

So, I fold inward once more.

Now I am staring at my self

not myself but my self.

They look,

different.

Blissful, but not happy.

My self does not believe

in happy.

In the dream state,

there are no words

and no need to vocalize.

There is only thought

everything is thought.

Smiles and frown and tears

and joy

and just thought.

Me thinks my self

knows more than me.

Perhaps she

knows better

than me.

In any case,

she says,

this time you watch

me,

watch your self.

Do not drift here

or there.

Just watch and see

look and feel

how you and me

are a part of something

bigger.

“Anglo-American legal systems conceptualize their subjects – with specific exceptions – as individuals with minds, or mental states, who intend to commit, and who foresee their outcome to the extent that any reasonable person could do so (Morse 2004, 2006, 2008; Morse and Hoffman 2007)” (Rose & Abi-Rached 178).

I am already spoken for.

Brain scans and testing and

the stamp on my chart.

The condemned

the condamned,

condamnation

condemning the nation

with red stamps,

yellowing papers nailed

to the front doors

of my mind.

“Doesn’t work well with others”

What the hell is this?

One picture of

my gray matters.

The only matter

that really matters.

But “I” matters.

Why can’t I matter?

That white tube

that whirrs and blurrs

and spits me out

with a stamp that reads:

“Not suitable

for this society”.

“Where human life is concerned, scientific tools are not neutral: ‘the mind has been recreated in their image'” (Rose & Abi-Rached 159).

To be more specific… the collective ‘we’ defines the brain through the instruments created to define the brain. If the rapidity of the synapses firing when watching a bird drink from a fountain needs to be measured (for example) then an instrument will be tailored specifically to measure that function. We only know what we know from what we create to measure what we want to know.

Neuroscience is like language. In language, tools (letters, numbers, words, and other symbols) are created to express emotions, actions, etc. In the neurosciences, tools are created to measure these specific things. In language these tools are arbitrary (in the modern sense) and in neuroscience these tools are created to narrowly define specific actions in the brain.

That brings me to the impossible notion that the mind can be undefined or defined definitely because the mind is the one defining its self. But even thinking about defining the mind forces you to use your mind and thus the whole notion is off-set. The mind is constantly re-defining its self based upon what it knows and for what it does not know, it creates and instrument to figure it out and the process begins again and again.