Disinterpellation and Emergentism

Disinterpellation emerges at the moment of diagnostic disclosure when a patient’s dualistic understanding of sex is intersected by the scientific fact that sex is variant and this variance is inscribed onto his/her body disturbing the subjective coherence of the patient’s identity. This discordance is described as a tear in the fabric of knowledge where two forces, social ideals and scientific facts pull in opposite directions. To mend this tear this book explores three different mechanisms: essentialism, naturalism and emergentism. This chapter critically examines the third of these, emergentism which involves changing the meaning of the term sex (social ideal) to reflect the varience of sex anatomies (scientific fact) and identifying a mechanism for applying ought while respecting autonomy. This requires three processes: firstly, to expose the deeply entrenched assumptions that make sex variance seem unnatural; secondly, to highlight biological perspectives which recognise variance and contingency to be fundamental features of all living things; and thirdly, to identify a means of differentiating desirable and undesirable variance that is not oppressive.