Contact
Biography
I am a philosopher and a social theorist, whose work combines Continental philosophy, intellectual history, and political theory. My current research focuses on the impact of the life-sciences on society, and especially the way neuroscience and molecular biology change human beings' self understanding, thus contributing to the naturalization of the human. After completing my PhD in Italy, I have been awarded several postdoctoral fellowships, both European (2004, DAAD; 2005, OEAD; 2007/2008, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin; 2008/2009 European Neuroscience and Society Network/ESF, at the Bios Centre, LSE and the Cesames Centre, University of Paris V) and American (2006/2007 Fulbright Research Scholar at the Committee on Social Thought, University of Chicago). I started my work at the Institute for Science and Society in June 2009 as a Marie Curie Fellow (Intra-European Fellowship), funded for two years by the Marie Curie Actions/People Program of the EU (FP7-PEOPLE-IEF-2008), for a project titled "The Emergence of a Biosociety", completed in May 2011. From June 2011 a new three year research grant has started, based at and supported by the School of Sociology and Social Policy and the ISS, and titled "The Seductive Power of the Neurosciences: An Intellectual Genealogy", with a partial financial contribution by the same EU (European Reintegration Grant, FP7-PEOPLE-2010-RG). I am the author of one book in Italian on Freud and Philosophy (2005), and am currently working on a second book on the moral and political relevance of contemporary naturalism, and neuroscience in particular. I have published, in Italian and English, on topics such as: Girard, Freud, and Lacan; Freud and cognitivism; Gramsci and psychoanalysis; neuroscience and philosophy; naturalism and philosophy; naturalism and anti-naturalism in contemporary philosophical debates; naturalization of human identity in the long-duree history of the "cerebral subject"; philosophical criticisms of the neurosciences; neuroscience and political theory.
Research Summary
THE EMERGENCE OF A BIOSOCIETY
Toward an "anthropology of the contemporary"
Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship (FP7-PEOPLE-IEF-2008): June 2009 - May 2011
This research project aims to provide an analysis of the fundamental shift, over the last thirty years, from culture to biology, from language to the brain, from ethics to genes, in the explanation of what makes us specifically human. The present age is one in which the intimate boundary between biology and history is being renegotiated: although human beings are certainly no more biological than they were thirty years ago, they tend to identify themselves, explain themselves and see their image, more and more through the lens of neurobiological, genetic and molecular terms. Clearly this change has had a direct impact on how Modernity is conceptualised in terms of what one may call the 'emergence of a Biosociety'. The project will address the profile of this emerging Biosociety according to three main lines of enquiry: I) a genealogical reconstruction in terms of intellectual history of the main factors that have contributed to the return of a biology-centred paradigm II) a sociological analysis of the emergence of new forms of subjectivities and identities that are currently built in a biological, and molecular, style of thought III) a theoretical study of the current process of biologization and naturalization of the human identity, and its impact upon European culture, with its philosophical, anthropological and Humanistic legacy (For a preliminary list of conference papers and publications related to this project, see the sections Past Resarch and Publications)
THE SEDUCTIVE POWER OF THE NEUROSCIENCES: AN INTELLECTUAL GENEALOGY
European Reintegration Grant (FP7-PEOPLE-2010-RG): June 2011 - May 2014
The current explosion of neuroscientific references in a plethora of disciplinary fields, with plenty of psychological and cultural phenomena that have been 'turned neurobiological', represents one of the most remarkable characteristics in our epoch. What once was described with recourse to a humanistic vocabulary is today increasingly represented by the language of neurobiology: a certain "way of thinking has taken shape" today (Rose, 2007), one for which everything that is relevant for human beings has to leave a trace in the brain. The aim of this multidisciplinary research project is to investigate such a 'neuromania' scenario of our days, trying to shed light on some background reasons for the current seductive power of the neurosciences. Building on the previous two-year IEF MC at the same host institution, this project explores the way neuroscientific references have penetrated countless disciplinary fields, created their own plethora of neurodisciplines and affirmed themselves as a foundational narrative endowed with epistemic but also normative force. The research follows a three-stage approach: A) A Systematic Cartography of the emergence of a new constellation of "neurodisciplines" and the way neuroscientific suggestions have made their way through plenty of disciplinary fields, included areas traditionally resistant to neurobiological discourses (e.g.: philosophy, sociology and political theory) B) An Assessment of the specific cognitive dimension of the problem, with particular focus on "the illusion of explanatory depth" (Keil, 2003) which seems part of the "seductive allure" (Skolnick Weisberg et al., 2008) and "particular persuasive" force (McCabe and Castel, 2008) of neuroscientific explanations C) An Analysis of the moral and normative dimension that contributes to the intellectual authority of the neurosciences today, interpreted here as a new source for moral and political discourses after the intellectual failures and traumas of the twentieth century.
Recent Publications
MELONI M., 2010. “Il piacere in un’età neurobiologica” [The Concept of Pleasure in a Neurobiological Era]. In: D'ABBIERO (ED), ed., Riflessioni filosofiche sulla felicità [Philosophical Thoughts on Happiness] Milan. Guerini. 213-228
MELONI M., 2010. Biopolitics for Philosophers Economy and Society. 39(4), 551-566
Past Research
RESISTING THE BRAIN: Philosophers at the forefront of neurobiological scepticism.
Funded by the European Neuroscience and Society Network (European Science Foundation) and conducted at the Bios Centre, LSE (Oct 2008 - Jan 2009, Apr -May 2009), and the Cesames Centre, University of Paris V, R. Descartes (February-March 2009).
In spite of neurophilosophers and other neuroscience-friendly efforts such as neurophenomenology, a relevant number of philosophers and other social theorists are still at the forefront of resistance to neuroscience, thus keeping alive a cultural opposition that goes back at least to Hegel's sneering at Gall's phrenology. My research has attempted to provide a cartography for these points of resistance - epistemological, ontological, societal, moral and political - as well as an evaluation of their suitability for interpreting the novel characteristics of the present neuroscientific wave.
NATURALISM AS AN ONTOLOGY OF OURSELVES: Living and thinking in a neurobiological era.
This project began with an award from the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, 2007-2008.
From psychiatry to philosophy, from anthropology to the social sciences, over the last thirty years a massive swell of naturalistic rhetoric has increasingly come to occupy what was once the domain of supremely cultural, historical, and social matters - all the phenomena for which the German Idealists coined the expression Geist. This project has addressed contemporary naturalism less as an epistemological issue than as a global way of rethinking humanness, or, in other words, as the theoretical "correlative" (Foucault 2008) of certain current practices which produce the naturalization of the human.
Future Research
Recent Papers and Lectures
May 2011, "From the Social to the Ethical Brain: Toward a Moral Authority of Neurobiology?" Paper Given at the Science and Technology Studies Priority Group and ISS Research Group, Univ. of Nottingham
April 2011, "What do we really want from neuroscience? Sociological remarks on the great expextations toward the brain sciences", British Sociological Association Annual Conference, LSE, London
December 2010, "Neuroscience: the Critical and the Uncritical", Conference "Challenging Orthodoxies" at the Warwick Institute of Governance and Public Management, Univ. of Warwick
November 2010, "On The Normative Force of The Neurosciences", Poster presented at the Second Congress of the Neuroethics Society, San Diego, Ca USA
August 2010, "Bare Life in the Lab. Sheer Vitality from Agamben to Neuroscience." World Congress of the Society for the Social Study of Science, Tokyo, Japan
July 2010, " Bare Life Naturalism. From Agamben to Neuroscience and Back". Paper given at the 6th Annual Joint Conference of the Society for European Philosophy and the Fourm for European Philosophy, Loyola University Chicago, Rome Center.
July 2010, "Bare Life in the Lab". Paper given at the International Conference on "The Experimental Society", Institute for Advanced Studies, Lancaster University
February 2010, "Bare Life Naturalism: Science, Power, and Identities in a Neurobiological Era." Paper given at the Conference, "Power: Philosophical Approaches in European Thought". School of Communication, Culture and Media, Nottingham Trent University
January 2010, "Biopolitics in a Neurobiological Era", paper given at the Telos Conference 2010 "From Lifeworld to Biopolitics: Empire in the Age of Obama", New York City. http://www.telospress.com/main/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=356
November 2009, "Naturalism as an Ontology of Ourselves", Seminar at the University of Sussex, Centre for Social and Political Thought
September 2009: "Politics and the 'Life Sciences boom'. 'Biological facts' in political theory", paper given at the Vital Politics III Conference, Bios Centre, London School of Economics and Political Science, London
August 2009: "A Farewell to Antinaturalism? European Philosophy in a Naturalistic Era", paper given at the 2009 Joint Conference of the Society for European Philosophy and Forum for European Philosophy, University of Wales Institute, Cardiff
June 2009: "Antinaturalism as Biopolitical Immunization: Addressing Life Within the Continental Tradition", paper given at the Conference "Towards a Philosophy of Life", Hope University, Liverpool
May 2009: "Unavailable to Naturalization. Critical Theory and the Limits of Naturalism", paper given at the John Cabot University (Rome) - Third Conference on Critical Theory "Images of a Demystified World"
Feb 2009: "The Brain's Borders. Mapping Cultures of Philosophical Resistance to Cerebralization" talk at the Seminar on Philosophie et histoire de la médecine mentale, the CESAMES Centre, Univ. of Paris V. Handout on line at Prof. P.H. Castel's homepage: http://pierrehenri.castel.free.fr
December 2008: "Naturalism as an Ontology of the Present. A Continental View", paper given at the Bios Center, LSE, London
November 2008: "Naturalizing People. Rhetoric of Naturalization in the Emerging Biosociety", paper given at the Institute for Science and Society, Univ. of Nottingham
November 2008: "Still Breaking the brain scientist's skull? Philosophers in the forefront of neurobiological resistances", seminar at the Univ. of Aarhus (Denmark), arranged by the European Neuroscience and Society Network
November 2008: Paper given at the "Congresso Internacional Novas Fronteiras Da Subjetivação", Rio de Janeiro - Instituto de Medicina Social (UERJ), Univ. of Rio de Janeiro, on the topic "Between Natural Objects and Cultural Subjects. The Instable Nature of Humanness and Subjectivity in the Philosophical Debate"