Gender Identity and the Appeal of the Brain

Lecture by Sahar Sadjadi (2018-2019 Paris IAS fellow) within the framework of the lecture series "Sciences in Context", organized by CRI and Paris IAS

Sciences in Context is a new public lecture series, which aims to bring concepts and perspectives from the frontiers of the humanities to the CRI community.

Each lecture will take place on the last Tuesday of the month, featuring fellows from CRI and from the Institut d'Études Avancées (IEA) de Paris.

Lecture topics will be discussed in an open session of the Practical Philosophy Club on the Friday before each lecture, to facilitate an active and participatory discourse with the invited speaker.

Complete program

Abstract

Based on an ethnographic study of psychiatric and endocrine practices around childhood gender variance in the United States,this lecture explores the contemporary cultural attachment to entities such as the brain as the origin of identity, and to children as harbingers of authenticity. It questions the assumption that it is the appeal of nature and biology that underlies the turn to the brain as the location for the origin of identity. This lecture discusses how cultural conceptions of the body and the soul, and modern accounts of the self as interiority and psychic depth shape clinical practices around childhood gender transition.