Angels with Nanotech Wings: Magic, Medicine and Technology in Aronofksky's The Fountain, Gibson's The Neuromancer and Slonczewski's Brain Plague

Darren Aronofsky's feature film The Fountain (2006), William Gibson's celebrated novel The Neuromancer (1984)and Joan Slonczewski'ls best-seller Brain Plague (2000), all have in common a preoccupation with the neuroscientific secrets of the brain. But more than this, all these works that explore the vicissitudes of posthuman identity offer scholarly opportunities which can combine a Deleuzian reading of the 'neuro-image' (Pisters) with a meditative critique on the persistence of magical thinking (Plato read 'otherwise'). "Angels with Nanotech Wings" makes a compelling argument for spotting something that slips between the synapses of the brain, less Schrodinger's cat than a seventeenth century 'angel'.