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SUMMARY:Brainwashing the cybernetic subject: The Ipcress File and fantasie
 s of interrogation in the 1960s - Marcia Holmes (Birkbeck\, University of 
 London)
DTSTART:20160218T130000Z
DTEND:20160218T140000Z
UID:TALK63297@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Richard Staley
DESCRIPTION:This year marks the 50th anniversary of _The Ipcress File_ (19
 65)\, the film that introduced Harry Palmer\, a spy who\, like James Bond 
 and George Smiley\, is iconic of the Cold War era's fascination with Briti
 sh espionage. Less recognized is how _The Ipcress File_ heralded a new app
 roach to depicting 'brainwashing' on screen. Unlike previous films that po
 rtrayed brainwashing as a brutal process of indoctrination\, Harry Palmer 
 is subjected to psychedelic abstractions of light and electronic music\, p
 ulsating to the 'rhythm of brainwaves'. This new cinematic language of bra
 inwashing brought into alignment late 1950s and early '60s innovations in 
 media\, art and science\, shading them with anxieties about secret intelli
 gence and mind control. As my paper will argue\, in this emerging constell
 ation of aesthetic and intellectual concerns\, what Jonathan Crary has cal
 led the 'problem of attention' intersects with what Fred Turner has called
  the 'politics of consciousness'\, conceiving a vulnerable human subject t
 hat not only attends to media and other demands on her perception\, but al
 so scrutinizes\, and perhaps resists\, the effects this attention has on h
 er psyche. Beginning in the early '70s this fantasy of the doubly-perceivi
 ng subject would be pointedly criticised by British neuropsychologists lik
 e Timothy Shallice\, in their reactions to revelations that British agents
  used sensory deprivation techniques in interrogation.
LOCATION:Seminar Room 2\, Department of History and Philosophy of Science
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