In this book I try to explain the mystery of consciousness. Explaining the enigma is not the same thing as solving it. I want to tap into, to put forward from the anthropologist’s viewpoint, the extraordinary advances in the sciences dedicated to exploring the brain. Neurologists and psychiatrists are convinced that mental processes reside in the brain. My intention is to take an anthropological journey inside the cranium in search of consciousness, or at least of the traces it has left imprinted on the neuronal networks. What can an anthropologist discover in the brain? Identity is one of anthropology’s favorite and most studied topics, a condition usually seen as a host of symbols and cultural processes that centers around the definition of an “I,” a self that is essentially expressed as an individual fact, but that acquires a variety of collective dimensions: ethnic, social, religious, national, sexual, and many other identities. What identity is there inside the brain? Its principal expression is consciousness.

So that my objective is clear to the reader from the start, I wish to explain my understanding of consciousness – not with a strict definition, but rather by referring to the perspective of a philosopher who, to my way of thinking, is the founder of modern thought on this subject. I am not referring to Descartes. Scientists usually turn to him more to criticize his dualism than to support his ideas: by using him as a reference they remain trapped in the coordinates he established about the relation between the body and the soul. Actually, Descartes used the Latin term conscientia very few times. I intend to bring John Locke to my aid. He audaciously used the concept to put forward an idea that provoked intense discussion for a number of decades. I believe his idea is still useful for identifying and circumscribing the problem of consciousness.