Neuroscience At Work: Neurobiology, Trauma and Feminist Work Against Sexual Violence

• In Event: Neurosocieties: Interdisciplinary Explorations of the Brain, Culture and Ethics 1

Abstract

Neurobiological explanations of social issues have entered fields as diverse as education, health, social welfare and criminal justice. This paper focuses on the effects that neurobiological approaches to psychological trauma are having on policy and service provision in relation to violence against women. Drawing on qualitative research (document analysis, interviews) conducted in Australia I examine the ways in which practitioners in feminist sexual assault services draw on and integrate neurobiological understandings of trauma into their work, most notably to assist victims and survivors with the myriad of material bodily problems that they present to services. Not without some cause, feminists have been wary of biological essentialist tendencies in the neurosciences and bio-medical interventions into rape trauma, in particular, have been critiqued for de-politicising rape to a problem of individual adjustment. However, using the above research as a springboard, I argue that this uptake of neurobiology in practice offers rich possibilities for feminist theoretical work on sexual violence. The final part of the paper explores possibilities for reintroducing a (non-essentialist) biology of the body into theories of sexual violence and bringing feminist new materialist work ( i.e. Rosi Braidotti, Elizabeth Wilson) and feminist theories of sexual violence into a productive dialogue with the concept of trauma. This paper provides an insight into what neuroscientific knowledge can ‘look like’ when put to work in setting far removed from the laboratory and into the productive rather than reductive possibilities of an engagement between neuroscience and politicised fields - such as feminism.

Author

• Suzanne Therese Egan, University of Sydney