Neurorhetorics: Cybernetics, Psychotropics, and the Materiality of Persuasion

This article maps notable moments in, and intersections between, mid-twentieth-century scientific investigations into cybernetics and psychotropics. In particular, it focuses on the two fields' recurring interests in identifying the role of rhetoric, or persuasion, in the various networks (biological, technological, cultural) that surrounded both their scientific investigations and the presentation of such research within their formal disciplines and to the public. The article begins and ends by considering might what be learned from this history in thinking through our possible analyses of, and responses to, the contemporary moment, one in which two phenomena that very much grew from these earlier scientific inquiries—psychopharmacology and human–machine networks—are becoming increasingly ubiquitous.