70 CHAPTER THREE
forthcoming, 2016), mirror neurons can appear in multiple and contra-
dictory forms. Here I address these multiplicities and the prospects for
thinking of mirror neurons in more ontogenetically specific, dynamic, and
situated terms. A better grasp of their entanglement with social complex-
ities can help rethink the terms of intersubjectivity and intercorporeality,
from a natural relation out of which sociality emerges to an event in which
nature/culture is transformed. This view calls into question certain claims
about the sociality of the brain^ —^ does it depend on the universality of bod-
ies, for example? Is sociality itself a matter of recognition, or does it include
misrecognition and conflict? My interest here is not to advance one theory
of mirror neurons over another, but rather to highlight different ways that
the social brain can be understood, and to underscore the stakes.
INTERLUDE: WALLET VS. GUN
All of the talk about intersubjective understanding and empathy to follow in
this chapter presumes that humans do generally understand each other, or
that at least we do quite regularly, and that understanding in some way leads
to empathy. I’ll not downplay these features of human sociality. (Nor will I
insist, as many do, that they are exclusively the outcome of explicit, symbolic
effort, which overcomes an essentially less social bodily nature.) But there
are constant examples of empathic failure and misunderstanding in everyday
life, which seem to entirely disappear in neuroscientific discussions of these
subjects except when cognitive pathology is discussed.^ Misunderstanding and
failures of empathy can be devastating, especially in contexts marked by social
inequality and violence.
As I worked on this chapter, New York City observed a tragic anniversary:
fifteen years since 1999, when a police shooting of an unarmed man devas-
tated city residents and drew national and international ire. The victim was
an immigrant from West Africa named Amadou Diallo. I remember that
year well; I had moved to New York to take my first job after graduate school
teaching in the public university system. Diallo was hardly the first casualty
of police brutality in New York, but we — my students, colleagues, and the
international media, too — were all talking about the shooting with disbelief
because the facts of the case seemed unfathomable. Diallo was twenty-three
years old. On a February evening, four white police officers shot forty- one