64 CHAPTER TWO
on discerning what the body can do, and feminist standpoint theory re-
lies on discerning what subjects can know. Yet one could better argue that
“Meaningful differences in knowledge and understanding are not features
of knowers or their epistemic location, but patterns in the world that show
themselves differently in different contexts” (Rouse 2009, 205).
This means that, second, the properties of body- minds are not fixed
in advance with respect to cognitive tasks. Theories that pose context-
dependent, relational roles for the various elements of a “cognitive econ-
omy,” whether these elements are the positions of body- subjects or the
arrangements of synaptic connections, can account for greater dynamism
in cognition and mind. Instead of understanding body- minds exclusively
in terms of elements that have properties prefigured by evolution, such as
conserved neural patterns, or by social structures such as intersectional
identities, they can be considered assemblages whose very assembling con-
ditions the capacities they exercise. Assemblage theories in feminism and
neurophilosophy, as well as in disability studies, call into question the pre-
determinacy of bodies and subjectivities, which seem instead to gain their
boundaries in and through experience.
Third, theories that recognize the fluidity of boundaries between body-
subjects and the world expand the complexity and malleability of mind be-
yond the individual, the human, and the organic, rendering exclusively bio-
logical or social frameworks insufficient. Such theories cannot assume that
bodily difference makes no epistemic difference, or that all assemblages of
mind/body/world are always equally functional, or that binary measures
capture their epistemic outcomes. Couplings of body- minds and worlds
can be more and less normative, more and less queer. At the same time, per-
spectives that emphasize malleability, fluidity, and boundlessness of mind
still need to grasp how experience leaves its trace on body- minds; in other
words, they need to acknowledge how experience can, over time, give us a
sense of ourselves as subjects (Blackman 2012; Protevi 2009). Otherwise,
they lead to an understanding of persons and assemblages as endlessly flex-
ible, infinite becomings that are unaffected by experience, including power
relations. The critical task, then, is to explore in what contexts and to what
degrees the boundaries of body- minds shift, and precisely how and in what
contexts these shifts may be variously enabling and constraining.
As my discussion in chapter 1 demonstrates, the recognition of multiple