Nowadays, we are nothing but our brains. Whereas we used to be composed of the intangible and unknowable secrets of mental or spiritual life, now we insist on the mechanistic materiality of the physical brain as the site of human being. This is the argument of Jan De Vos in his book Metamorphoses of the Brain, who describes the ongoing process of “neurologization” in which the brain has become the scientific and cultural obsession of our times. We celebrate the brain as the seat of humanity’s supposed intellectual superiority: a bio-chemical marvel of invention, imagination, and memory. 

This celebration of the brain increasingly focuses on the discovery of (neuro)plasticity: the brain’s capacity to be “plastic” and mutable, to adapt and reform itself throughout life in response to experience or injury. In this way, it goes, our brains sculpt our identity – or do we sculpt out brain’s identity? – just as an artist sculpts a sculpture or other works of plastic art. Individual identity is nothing but the polished sculpture composed of a lifetime of memories through which a cohesive and linear narrative of personhood emerges… Or is it?