Imagin(in)g the trans brain

Neurosciences of trans/gender are often critiqued for their binary and reductonist notions of sex/gender, sexuality, and trans/gender. In my M.A. thesis, I want to expand an explicitly trans studies’ examination of neurologized trans bodies from an angle, which focuses on the relationship between trans, materiality, and technology. For this, I draw on a notion of materiality that focuses on “processual materialization” (Bey). Rather than focusing on trans subjects and their embodied lived experience, this approach centers on trans livability. To analyze the materialization of trans livability in specific contexts, I analyze the technologies employed in one neuroscientific research paper on transness as an “apparatus of bodily production” (Barad; Haraway). First applied to the neurosciences in the 1990s, (functional) magnetic resonance imaging (short: (f)MRI) has become the most relevant technology for visualizing the living, human brain in the neurosciences of trans/gender. With the advent of (f)MRI existing theories about the etiology of transness became investigable in vivo. Among them is the theory of neurodevelopmentarism of trans/gender. Neurodevelopmentarism rests on the assumption that gender identity and gendered behavior are mainly determined by a hormonal organization/activation of the human brain in utero. I will analyze a recent neuroscientific fMRI research paper (Nota et al. 2017), which is striking due to its claim of presenting a new view on neurodevelopmentarism and its traveling from neurosciences to public discussions. Thus, my research question is: How does fMRI as an apparatus of body production enact specific trans-livabilities through the concept of neurodevelopmentalism?