NOTES TO CHAPTER 4 149mutual interactive engagement, and potentially achieves “a kind of joint age n c y,
and joint active world- orientation” (2013, 17). For Andrew Murphie, mirror neu-
rons “should not be seen, first, as operators of resemblance — a recognition of
a picture — between pregiven agents” (2010, 284). He argues rather that mirror
neurons have to be seen in terms of the contact of two different bodies/brains
that generates an emergent intersubjective reality.
12 Slaby describes the need for “a stance of acknowledging, of recognizing the other,
both in her (partial) agentive autonomy and in her exposedness as a vulnerable,
needy being (Butler 2001). With this, we come to let her be in what ultimately
remains an inevitable alterity” (2013, 17 – 18).
Chapter 4. Neurobiology and the Queerness of Kinship
1 In females oxytocin is also made in the corpus luteum, a temporary structure of
the ovaries that develops during the luteal phase of the menstrual cycle.
2 A current review of the research (Borrow and Cameron 2012) suggests it is still
unclear whether oxytocin is a byproduct of sexual arousal or facilitates it. If the
latter, it is unclear whether oxytocin does this in the central or peripheral ner-
vous system, through smooth muscle contraction in male and female reproduc-
tive organs.
3 For example, in a seminal study published in Nature, Kosfeld et al. (2005) mea-
sured the effects of administered oxytocin on men’s participation in a trust game
involving investments. They reported that those given oxytocin showed more
trust of another player than those who were not given oxytocin. In neuroeco-
nomics the research using this methodology is overwhelmingly focused on
males because researchers have viewed the menstrual cycle as an unwelcome
complicating factor.
4 In the female montane vole, they also found that oxytocin receptor distribution
changed twenty- four hours after parturition.
5 It is worth noting here that animal researchers have downplayed the normal
variation of parenting styles among mice and other lab animals, and that allopar-
enting and even cross- species relations of care have been regularly observed in
animals whose neurohormonal processes have not been manipulated.
6 On the strong version of this view, articulated, for example, by Larry Young, oxy-
tocin and other neural systems act as biological determinants, directly shaping
social life through their role in reproduction. Other accounts, such as Church-
land’s, are keen to acknowledge the vast cultural diversity in social arrangements
and values as well as the plasticity of the oxytocin system.
7 In the two studies described by Rosenblatt and Terkel, both the rats treated with
pregnancy hormones and those who were not eventually adopted young that
were not their own. The rats administered hormones immediately retrieved
pups who moved away from them. In the other study similar behavior developed
without the exogenous administration of hormones. Instead, cohabitation and