116 CHAPTER FOUR
does not ‘exist,’ that never had a chance to exist, that was never meant to
exist” (114). Because, for Butler, bonds are actualized through social recog-
nition, the very reality of unintelligible bonds is put into question by hetero-
normativity. But as Butler also points out, the social recognition of some
queer bonds threatens others, those that veer farthest from reproductive
relations. At best, the legitimation of some bonds forecloses other possibil-
ities; at worst, it can lead to “new and invidious forms of social hierarchy”
in which some bonds are vilified in the effort to give social status to others
(115). It is these prospects that cause Butler to weigh the limits to kinship
altogether. (Perhaps, she suggests, kinship should be abandoned in favor
of bodies and pleasures.)
Neuroscientific moves to deemphasize genetics in favor of affective ties
take place in the context of a postgenetic world where kinships can no longer
be captured by genetic relatedness. Even as the biological sciences acknowl-
edge, and facilitate, the reality of new reproductive and nonreproductive
modes of life and relation, social hierarchies are being reinscribed. Neuro-
hormonal accounts of kinship may make possible new hierarchies that cen-
ter on the quality of bonds purportedly afforded by neurohormones. For
example, the status of mothers who undergo ivf with egg donation, and
give birth to babies not genetically their own, could trump those who use
surrogates to birth their genetically related offspring. Adoptive parents of
infants, who have more time to build bonds early in development, may find
more validation than those who adopt older children. Mothers who lactate
may be given more approval than parents who do not or cannot.^ (Social
neuroscientific research is now attempting to address the relative strength
of bonds between mother- infant dyads with different histories of birth
and feeding.) Conceivably, those with more oxytocin receptors could be
measured as having more resources for attachment than those with fewer.
Or, oxytocin will become available as a method of facilitating such bonds.
Social neuroscientists are already proposing theories about oxytocin’s role
in mental, cognitive, and social disorders, including autism, and advancing
administered oxytocin as a drug therapy. The scientific measure of certain
bonds as neurobiologically supported, undoubtedly, opens up intercorpo-
reality and affective kinship to biopolitical intervention and regulation.
To contest neurohormonal reductionism, in my view, it is better to insist
on the queer potential of nature, and nature/culture, than to deny the im-