6 INTRODUCTION
minorities, and the threat of “neurosexism” and other problems looms
large (Jordan- Young and Rumiati 2012). The reduction of social problems
to neurobiology can also result in the subjection of individuals and groups
to techniques of neurogovernance.
One of the most resilient examples of both neuroreductionism and bio-
logical determinism is the sexed brain — that is, the brain that is sexed
prenatally by reproductive hormones, is organized for reproduction, and
shapes gender roles. Even in the era of neural plasticity, some sex difference
researchers claim not only that the brain is organized in utero as male or fe-
male but also that this organization shapes individuals’ gender identity, sex-
ual orientation, and cognitive traits (e.g., Bao and Swaab 2011). Although
they could be read otherwise, studies using brain imaging technologies to
detect neural differences by sex often are interpreted through theories of
innate sex difference. As I discuss in the next chapter, feminists have shown
the fundamental contradiction between the brain’s plasticity and its neural
sex to be rooted not only in the intransigence of biological determinism but
also in the heteronormativity of scientific models and practices.^10 Feminist
responses range from skepticism of biological explanations of sex/gender,
to methodological critiques, to neomaterialist rereadings of neuroscientific
data. In this book I am concerned with what sort of critical perspective can
respond not only to the politics of biological determinism but also to the
corporeal politics of plasticity.
Critiques of science developed in the late twentieth century cast doubt
on empirical claims about the biological body and refuse the taken- for-
granted status of scientific facts, describing them instead as normative
frames of seeing the world. Drawing from structuralism, social construc-
tionism, and poststructuralism, often in dialogue with feminist thought,
they describe the ability of social institutions, discourses, practices, and
norms (over and above biological processes) to shape experience, to in-
scribe the body, and to produce subjects. In some respects these insights
are more salient than ever. The acknowledgment that human experience
is culturally and historically diverse is vital to counter the universalizing
claims that are still made by the neurosciences. The recognition that differ-
ence and inequality are socially organized — “made, not born” — is needed
to contest assertions that they are rooted in evolution or fixed in brain
structures. And attention to how scientific knowledge is historicized is nec-