Brain Warfare: The Covert Sphere, Terrorism, and the Legacy of the Cold War

Melley, Timothy

doi:10.1162/grey_a_00048

Cited by 29 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…These concerns are part of a longer history of anxieties about the boundaries of the individual and the limits of free will which have emerged in various forms, that is, in the figure of the vampire, the brainwasher, the charismatic cult leader, the hypnotist, and significantly, the abusive and controlling man. Melley (2011) describes the emergence of “brainwashing” in the 1950s as an expression of anxiety about the individual autonomy so prized in America as a cornerstone of its resistance to Communism and as a modern interpretation of older notions of “demonic possession, mesmerism and hypnosis” (p. 25). Although he diverges greatly from the classic image of the vampire, Edward can be read as the carrier of some contemporary anxieties about, as well as fascination with, current discursive limits of autonomy and free will.…”

Section: The Resignification Of the Vampirementioning

confidence: 99%

Bite Me! The Twilight Saga, a Fantasy Space of Self-Transformation as Self-Realization

Jameson

Dane

2014

Journal of Communication Inquiry

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This article seeks to challenge the conventional reading of the Twilight saga as a regressive influence on young women. We argue that by drawing on themes of governmentality and fantasy, it is possible to open up the debate to consider Twilight as a text offering a fantasy space of transcending the limitations of neoliberal subjecthood. In particular, the article focuses on the figure of the vampire Edward Cullen as the carrier of anxieties around the boundaries of the autonomous subject and highlights the ways in which Bella Swan's desire for transformation to vampire speaks to a specific set of normative neoliberal ideals for young women in the 21 st century.

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Section: The Resignification Of the Vampirementioning

confidence: 99%

Bite Me! The Twilight Saga, a Fantasy Space of Self-Transformation as Self-Realization

Jameson

Dane

2014

Journal of Communication Inquiry

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“…As the literary scholar Timothy Melley has argued, visions of brainwashing depicting the abuse of the human sciences at the hands of covert institutions were a ‘quintessential fantasy’ of the Cold War (Melley, 2011: 21). The term brainwashing first appeared in the early 1950s to describe indoctrination and interrogation techniques used in China and the Soviet Union, but as recent scholarship on the subject has shown, it soon came to represent diverse means of social and behavioural control (Carruthers, 2009; Dunne, 2013; Melley, 2011, 2012). Indeed, Lilly’s work in the 1950s influenced and responded to what historians have called the ‘Cold War brainwashing scare’, and in turn inspired films and literature in which brainwashing was a central plot device (Dearden, 1963; Seed, 2004: 210–15).…”

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confidence: 99%

On ‘modified human agents’: John Lilly and the paranoid style in American neuroscience

Williams

2019

History of the Human Sciences

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The personal papers of the neurophysiologist John C. Lilly at Stanford University hold a classified paper he wrote in the late 1950s on the behavioural modification and control of ‘human agents’. The paper provides an unnerving prognosis of the future application of Lilly’s research, then being carried out at the National Institute of Mental Health. Lilly claimed that the use of sensory isolation, electrostimulation of the brain, and the recording and mapping of brain activity could be used to gain ‘push-button’ control over motivation and behaviour. This research, wrote Lilly, could eventually lead to ‘master-slave controls directly of one brain over another’. The paper is an explicit example of Lilly’s preparedness to align his research towards Cold War military aims. It is not, however, the research for which Lilly is best known. During the 1960s and 1970s, Lilly developed cult status as a far-out guru of consciousness exploration, promoting the use of psychedelics and sensory isolation tanks. Lilly argued that, rather than being used as tools of brainwashing, these techniques could be employed by the individual to regain control of their own mind and retain a sense of agency over their thoughts and actions. This article examines the scientific, intellectual, and cultural relationship between the sciences of brainwashing and psychedelic mind alteration. Through an analysis of Lilly’s autobiographical writings, I also show how paranoid ideas about brainwashing and mind control provide an important lens for understanding the trajectory of Lilly’s research.

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“…I offer the 1965 British film The Ipcress File , directed by Sidney J. Furie and starring Michael Caine, as a useful case for exploring the relationship between popular brainwashing imagery and transatlantic developments in science, modern art and multimedia communication. Recent scholarship on the cultural imagery surrounding brainwashing has tended to focus on The Manchurian Candidate , the 1962 film directed by John Frankenheimer ( Andriopoulos, 2011 ; Carruthers, 1998 ; Jacobson and Gonzalez, 2006 ; Killen, 2011 ; Melley, 2011 ; Seed, 2004 ; Winter, 2011 ). Though it has received far less attention, The Ipcress File illuminates a particular vision of ‘brainwashing’ that was imagined, seemingly for the first time, in the mid-1960s: a consciously cinematic, almost psychedelic, composition of flashing images and pulsating noises that, the film suggested, might reprogramme a spectator’s consciousness.…”

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confidence: 99%

Brainwashing the cybernetic spectator: The Ipcress File, 1960s cinematic spectacle and the sciences of mind

Holmes

2017

History of the Human Sciences

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This article argues that the mid-1960s saw a dramatic shift in how 'brainwashing' was popularly imagined, reflecting Anglo-American developments in the sciences of mind as well as shifts in mass media culture. The 1965 British film The Ipcress File (dir. Sidney J. Furie, starr. Michael Caine) provides a rich case for exploring these interconnections between mind control, mind science and media, as it exemplifies the era's innovations for depicting 'brainwashing' on screen: the film's protagonist is subjected to flashing lights and electronic music, pulsating to the 'rhythm of brainwaves'. This article describes the making of The Ipcress File's brainwashing sequence and shows how its quest for cinematic spectacle drew on developments in cybernetic science, multimedia design and modernist architecture (developments that were also influencing the 1960s psychedelic counterculture). I argue that often interposed between the disparate endeavours of 1960s mind control, psychological science and media was a vision of the human mind as a 'cybernetic spectator': a subject who scrutinizes how media and other demands on her sensory perception can affect consciousness, and seeks to consciously participate in this mental conditioning and guide its effects.

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Brain Warfare: The Covert Sphere, Terrorism, and the Legacy of the Cold War

Cited by 29 publications

References 4 publications

Bite Me! The Twilight Saga, a Fantasy Space of Self-Transformation as Self-Realization

Bite Me! The Twilight Saga, a Fantasy Space of Self-Transformation as Self-Realization

On ‘modified human agents’: John Lilly and the paranoid style in American neuroscience

Brainwashing the cybernetic spectator: The Ipcress File, 1960s cinematic spectacle and the sciences of mind

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