The Vernacularisation of Modern Neurosciences: A Case Study of Neuro-Autobiographies in The Age of Complexity

This dissertation explores the vernacularisation of modern neurosciences which refers to the everyday communication and materialization of neuroscientific concepts for and by a lay population in order to reframe societys understanding of brain disorders, mental illness, and ultimately the self. Taking this social phenomenon into account, this dissertation examines how neuroscientific knowledge may get entangled, enfolded, unfolded as in the case study of self-narratives written by professional women with neurological conditions which are coined here as neuro-autobiographies. The interaction between the neuroscientific knowledge and the autobiographers lived experience with a brain condition contributes to a complex process of life-writing and rhetorical expressions, which creates an ecological relation with various agents, contexts, and networks that emerge organically out of noise, disturbances, interruptions, and fluctuations; ultimately, such interactions can challenge the order-disorder of the discourses. In this view, the neuro-autobiographies transcend the concept of a literary genre, once they are considered part of a communication system that is dynamic, non-linear, and self-organized.
The theoretical framework developed in this dissertation is interdisciplinary, grounded in concepts from applied linguistics, complexity thought (e.g. complex adaptive systems), womens autobiography studies, and pedagogical studies. This dissertation applies a qualitative methodology based on discourse analysis (e.g. rhetorical and stylistic devices) to examine five self-narratives in order to identify how underlying neuroscientific concepts are entangled with personal experiences and knowledge through the use of a vernacular language. The five autobiographers are: Temple Grandin, Siri Hustvedt, Jill Bolte Taylor, Barbara Arrowsmith, and Francesca Martinez. The interdisciplinary approach allows the neuro-autobiographies to be studied as open systems in interaction with the vernacularisation of the neurosciences in distinct contexts such as the educational one. With this in mind, this study holds an applied component to collaborate with higher education by proposing a vernacular neurosciences course that focuses on the neuro-autobiographies examined in this dissertation. The proposed course syllabus aims to develop a vernacular neurosciences literacy through a transdisciplinary approach that envisions to bridge the divide between the humanities and the sciences in academic settings. The teaching and learning of threshold concepts based on the neuro-autobiographies aim to foster students critical thinking by questioning how the vernacularisation of the neurosciences can reframe our understanding of the human brain in relation to the self, and to women in particular, who live with certain neurological conditions.