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Short abstract:

A variety of animal models are used to understand neurodegeneration caused by traumatic brain injury. Based on ethnographic research, I explore renderings of ‘the human’ and ‘the animal’ in these neurosciences, with a focus upon the raced and gendered implications of these interspecies entanglements

Long abstract:

The last two decades have seen increasing recognition that concussion and other forms of traumatic brain injury may constitute risk factors for Alzheimer’s-like dementias. Unsurprisingly, one consequence of the contemporary ‘concussion crisis’ is the increasing use of animal models aimed at better understanding the neurodegenerative effects of brain injury in humans. In order to better comprehend this emerging field of research, in this presentation I draw upon my observations and interviews with scientists undertaking pre-clinical research and studying brain injury in animals. Following queer theorist Mel Chen, my particular approach is to understand “animality” and “humanity” less as essences that are intrinsically attached to particular species (a mouse, a sheep, a human), than as “sticky” concepts that may-or-may-not be bound to particular bodies. In other words, I seek explore the presence of the human in the animal, and the animal in the human. Based upon my ethnographic work, I suggest that “the human” is ever present in these animal laboratories, not only as an imagined end-point beneficiary of research, but also in the body of a mouse that staggers under a concussive blow, the neuropathological brain slice of a bovine studied under a microscope, and in laboratory protocols stressing a commitment to social justice. I focus in particular upon the raced and gendered implications of these interspecies entanglements, suggesting that while scientists are committed in their progressive political and research agenda, there remain troubling resonances in this particular transposition of human and animal.