Neuralink and the rise of psychopolitical governmentality

Over the past decade, Neuralink has become a techno-scientific project that embodies a technological, health and ethical revolution. However, there is still little research analysing it as a political project. In this article, we argue that Neuralink is the embodiment of a new political-social regime that we call psychopolitics, borrowing from the work of Han (2014) and Stiegler (2002). This regime is essentially characterised by the imperative to translate psychological processes into data, and by the ultimate goal of optimising our psyche and making it the main arena for political debate. To illustrate this, we first analyse the notion of psychopolitics and the main devices that constitute it. We then present Neuralink as a case study and examine the main results obtained using the content analysis software Atlas.ti (v.23). Finally, we conclude by showing that Neuralink is the prime example of a psychopolitical project at work in our time.