Brainstorms: A Cultural History of Undisciplined Thought

This book-length project charts the rich but unknown history of the American concept of "brainstorm" from 1894 to 1960. Until WWII, brainstorm was the American name for a nervous disorder epitomized by an abundance of ideas, and elaborated to describe irrational behavior in medical, legal, and economic domains. After 1938 brainstorming transformed into a positive process to garner new ideas, especially in military and industrial contexts, and was gradually institutionalized to the point of becoming common sense. In charting this cultural history, the project investigates how having an uncontrolled flow of ideas moved from an object of deviance and pathology into a method to collectively increase productivity. By situating the brainstorm concept within its twentieth century socio-political conditions of emergence the project seeks to describe how the use of the traveling concept articulated with or resisted discourses in psychology, medicine, economics, and management. Through a detailed analysis of how the industrious version of brainstorm emerged and transformed in response to e.g. military and managerial rationalities, the standardization and disciplining of work, and the incorporation of social scientists in corporate America, I intend to show that the shift from irrationality as an index of bodily malady toward the employment of irrational thought as a productive tool is more than an accident of history.