000			a
999			_c32446 _d32446
008			230825b xxu||||| |||| 00| 0 eng d
020			_a9780816699889
082			_a153.8530973 _bSEL
100			_aSelisker, Scott
245			_aHuman programming : brainwashing, automatons, and American unfreedom
260			_bUniversity of Minnesota Press, _c2016 _aMinneapolis :
300			_aviii, 256 p. ; _bill., _c22 cm
365			_b26.00 _cUSD _d85.40
504			_aIncludes bibliographical references and index.
520			_aDo our ways of talking about contemporary terrorism have a history in the science, technology, and culture of the Cold War? Human Programming explores this history in a groundbreaking work that draws connections across decades and throughout American culture, high and low. Scott Selisker argues that literary, cinematic, and scientific representations of the programmed mind have long shaped conversations in U.S. political culture about freedom and unfreedom, and about democracy and its enemies. Selisker demonstrates how American conceptions of freedom and of humanity have changed in tandem with developments in science and technology, including media technology, cybernetics, behaviorist psychology, and sociology. Since World War II, propagandists, scientists, and creative artists have adapted visions of human programmability as they sought to imagine the psychological manipulation and institutional controls that could produce the inscrutable subjects of totalitarian states, cults, and terrorist cells. At the same time, writers across the political spectrum reimagined ideals of American freedom, democracy, and diversity by way of contrast with these posthuman specters of mental unfreedom. Images of such "human automatons" circulated in popular films, trials, travelogues, and the news media, giving form to the nebulous enemies of the postwar and contemporary United States: totalitarianism, communism, total institutions, cult extremism, and fundamentalist terrorism. Ranging from discussions of The Manchurian Candidate and cyberpunk science fiction to the cases of Patty Hearst and the "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh, Human Programming opens new ways of understanding the intertwined roles of literature, film, science, and technology in American culture.
650			_aAutomatism
650			_aBattlesta rGalactica
650			_a Coercive persuasion
650			_aIslamophobia
650			_aJohn Walker Lindh
650			_aManchurian candidate
650			_aPatty Hearst
650			_aPosthuman
650			_aScience Fiction
650			_aTotalitarian
650			_aUnification church
650			_aAdvertising
650			_aMedia technology
650			_aPsychological manipulation
650			_aCat righting reflex
942			_2ddc _cBK