An Archive of Brains: Mobilisations of Past and Future in a Danish Brain Banking Debate

My project revolves around a Danish brain collection established in 1945 consisting of 9.479 brains from psychiatric patients who died in state hospitals. These brains were collected without consent and without informing next of kin. Active collection stopped in 1982, but the brains were kept and has since been enrolled
in several research projects, especially on familial dementias, depression, and schizophrenia. The collection has been the subject of public debate at several occasions since the early 1990s, and the Danish Ethical
Council has issued two independent statements (1992 & 2006) about the ethics of the collection. Last year, in June, the regional council who bears financial responsibility for the collection, decided to close it down. A
public bid was opened up for other research institutions interested in taking over the collection, but so far none have been able to allocate the needed storage space, or sufficient funds. If no bid is placed before
summer, the collection will be destroyed, presumably by cremation. This decision also has spurred a lively public debate, and renewed ethical deliberation.

My broad, initial interest in the collection is twofold and has to do with ontology and temporality: First, how does the (discursive and material) transformation from subject to object take place, and what kind of cultural tropes, hopes and anxieties accompany it? What is specific to brain sciences that deal with
material brains rather than images and models (as imaging sciences and neurochemical research)? Second, what role does history and historicity play in the debates about the collection? How is history put
to work in different political, epistemological, and ethical arguments? My paper will present an overview of the collection’s history and attempt to parse out the uses of history in
the recent debates.

We will be glad to receive your registration at: seraphina.rekowski@hu-berlin.de.