The Experimental Neuro-Framing of Sexuality
Year: 2013
Type: article
Abstract: Brain scans of homosexuality, sexual desire and images of male and female brain function are becoming a common element of popular scientific news. How is sexuality re-described and re-produced when studied in brain scanners? This article explores the cultural production of sexuality in the growing field of neuroimaging research. In focus is the neural framing of sexuality, i.e. the process by which sexuality is understood as a matter of brain activity and visualizable with medical imaging technologies. The neuroframing of sexuality enables a reproduction of socio-cultural notions of difference, but also of neuroscience’s own notions of agency. The neural framing of sexuality re-mediates an idealized sexuality: ageless, neatly oriented, bodiless although haunted by the de-animated body, unfolding neatly as a sequential response of a psychological inside to an inanimate outside, and essentialized as independent from its feelers and objects.
Author: Isabelle Dussauge
Language: English
Topic: Gender and Feminist Studies
Subfield: Gender Studies
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2149248335