I FEEL YOUR PAIN 69ground the affective view of communication as passing between bodies
without need of representation (Connolly 2010, 2011). Mirroring suggests
a mechanism by which individual bodies are innately social, and mirror
neurons have been used to challenge the poststructural view of culture as
primarily discursive (D. Franks 2010; Lizardo 2007).
Yet like other neuroscientific phenomena described in this book, the
scientific articulation of mirror neurons does more than affirm the signif-
icance of the material body for sociality. It also defines what sort of body
matters, what embodiment means, and what the social is. Most social the-
orists have paid relatively little attention to the particulars of how mirror
neurons are theorized and enacted in the neurosciences. They often ne-
glect the details of how mirror neuron researchers themselves adopt mod-
els from other disciplines, notably philosophy of mind and psychology,
to make sense of their findings. To be sure, this leads to the reification of
neuroscientific claims that in their original context often are considered to
be still tentative, and the treatment of neuroscientific research as strictly
empirical rather than also theoretical. More problematically, it also belies
the multiplicity of neuroscientific practices, including the different neu-
rons, brains, bodies, and embodiments they envision and enact.
In this chapter I unpack the dominant model of mirror neurons, which
sees them functioning as embodied simulation. Despite claims to the con-
trary, the model does not inevitably lend itself to a view of the brain as dy-
namically social, of the body- mind as richly relational, or of embodiment
as situated. Rather, it commonly brings forth mirror neurons as insular, at-
omistic entities shaped by evolution or fixed early in life. Its account of mir-
roring processes can seem generic, universal, and highly normative rather
than ontogenetically specific and multiple. And its epistemic claims, which
draw from particular conceptions of theory of mind and embodiment, are
questionable. I join other critics concerned about the proposed universality
of mirroring and its treatment as a basis for empathy and intersubjectivity,
which (I argue) presents a skewed, optimistic picture of social relations and
forecloses more politically astute assessments of somatic sociality.
However, other enactments of mirror neurons are possible. Just as dna
has been treated as both a “master molecule” that dictates traits and, al-
ternatively, in epigenetics, as a “flexible form of material agency” emerg-
ing through the reciprocity of organisms and their environments (Weasel