Bio-Science-Fiction: The Biologisation of the Identity in the medical and clinical discourses of Transexuality
Abstract
The scientific discourses on mental health, often transform social norms in natural truths, translating the "failure to adjust" in psychiatric nosology and neurochemical imbalances. Practices and subjectivities are located in the brain activity, with effects of universalisation and reification of social experience. In the specific case of "gender identity", when it doesn't correspond to a development constructed as "natural-normal"/normative, it is appropriate for the medical discourse in terms of diagnosis and treatment. Through discourse analysis, we review the rhetorical constructions that give credibility and legitimacy to the polyphonic discourse of the biologisation of identity. For that purpose, we use as texts of analysis a medical class, a book-manual and the replies to an editorial, as examples of pedagogical discourses and dissemination of scientific knowledge about transsexuality.
