Oscillatory Thoughts: Literary Neuroscience: ‘Unseeing’ in China Miéville’s the City & the City
As everyone is well aware by now, last month was quite the zombie neuroscience month for me. There was zomBcon, my interview of George Romero, and the National Geographic special, “The Truth Behind Zombies”.
Well, I don’t want to be a one-trick zombie pony. So I’m branching out with the whole neuroscience and science-fiction thing.
…Breach in the mind: The hypothetical neuroanatomy subserving the process of “unseeing” in China Miéville’s The City & The City
In China Miéville’s The City & The City, citizens of the grosstopically overlapping cities of Besźel and Ul Qoma are taught from birth to “unsee” the architecture, people, events, and surroundings of the other city. Despite the terminology, unseeing is not just limited to the sense of vision, but to all other senses as well, and as such citizens must also “unhear” and “unsmell” stimuli from the other city. The consequences of failing to unsee are dire and possibly life threatening, as the semi-mystical force of “Breach” is charged with removing any offenders who willfully or accidentally notice the other city. In areas where the cities are cross-hatched, citizens of each city must carefully and selectively unsee their surroundings, even for houses neighboring theirs, for cars sharing the same roads, and for people walking the same streets. All the while they must unsee while noticing just enough to avoid running into their forbidden neighbors.Although Miéville uses the process of unseeing for great narrative effect in a fictional setting, there is a rich neuroscientific literature surrounding the neuroanatomical bases for attention and awareness, perception, directed forgetting, sensory adaptation, repetition suppression, and other associated processes. In this presentation I will provide an introductory discussion on the neuroanatomical basis of attention and perception. From that foundation I will then provide a “hypothetical neuroanatomy” of what the brain of a person raised in a culture of unseeing might look like such that they could consciously and willfully unsee.
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