A criminal mind? A damaged brain? Narratives of criminality and culpability in the celebrated case of Aaron Hernandez

Henne, Kathryn; Ventresca, Matt

doi:10.1177/1741659019879888

Cited by 6 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 34 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The whittleddown one-way message, where tau is the chief agent in the story, lays the groundwork for an overbearing focus on mechanical causes of violent tendencies as though they appear only after sport-induced brain trauma. In some alarming cases, violence committed by athletes outside of sport-assaults and murders, often of women-is being read as a symptom of CTE in the perpetrator (Henne and Ventresca 2019). This is neuro-reductionism par excellence.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…With the agency of tau, a shift occurs wherein men who were violent as a job, and whose violence sometimes (often?) exceeds the field of play, become the victims of the drama (see also Henne and Ventresca 2019). Postmortem narratives are consolidated in some ways and not others, by the tellers, the journalists who selectively re-tell a story, and the scientists and doctors who speak on behalf of facts.…”

Section: Why Now? Agent Taumentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We find, though, that violent sports that are sewn into the cultural fabric of national identity (such as hockey in Canada) do not bear the same level of scrutiny. Like Henne and Ventresca (2019) we see "a functionalist conceptualization of sport; that is, sport goes unquestioned as a positive and progressive force…Sport, at least within the U.S. cultural imaginary, is often envisioned as enabling individual transformation through nurturing values of masculine strength and toughness and as fostering positive character development by promoting determination, discipline, and respect for authority." The underside comes to light when video cameras capture icons from North America's favourite sports beating up their girlfriends or when high school and college athletes are caught engaging in group assaults.…”

Section: Critical Neuroscience Meets Ctementioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Concussion killjoys: CTE, violence and the brain’s becoming

Martin

McMillan

2020

BioSocieties

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

CTE, or chronic traumatic encephalopathy, is caused by repetitive head trauma and detected by a distinctive stain for a protein called ‘tau’ in autopsied brain tissue. While the number of diagnosed patients is only in the hundreds, the cultural footprint of the disease in North America is huge, both because those diagnosed are often celebrity-athletes and because millions of children, adolescents and young men and women play collision sports like football and hockey. We argue that the widespread attention to CTE provides a useful wedge to crack open another, heretofore neglected public health concern: repetitive acts of violence in and around hypermasculine sports create subjects whose brains—and characters—are materially shaped by that violence. Brains change materially when delivering blows as well as receiving them, when participating in degrading hazing rituals as victim or assailant, when belittled or assaulted by a coach, when approaching an upcoming game riddled with fear. We adopt a biosocial model of the brain’s becoming to intervene in a linear discourse around CTE that medicalizes and oversimplifies violence, a story that prematurely dissects one slice of the problem from a noxious whole.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Why Now? Agent Taumentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Critical Neuroscience Meets Ctementioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Concussion killjoys: CTE, violence and the brain’s becoming

Martin

McMillan

2020

BioSocieties

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Grano further argues that the social values and conceptions of risk embedded within brain banking are unlikely to do justice to classed and raced aspects of risk-based decision making that are key to understanding the concussion crisis. Others (e.g., Brayton et al, 2019;Henne and Ventresca, 2019;Martin and McMillan, 2020) have likewise identified reductionist and/or neoliberal logics underpinning reporting into the concussion crisis; a conclusion that chimes with existing research suggesting that neuroscientific findings frequently perpetuate rather than challenge existing understandings of society (O'Connor et al, 2012;O'Connor and Joffe, 2013). These conclusions regarding the underpinning logics of concussion science and journalism are complementary to, and yet notably distinct from, those that consider overt conflicts of interest.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 80%

“Learning to Listen to Them and Ask the Right Questions.” Bennet Omalu, Scientific Objectivities, and the Witnessing of a Concussion Crisis

Hollin

2021

Front. Sports Act. Living

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The death of American Football player Mike Webster has become foundational to narratives of sport's twenty-first century concussion crisis. Bennet Omalu, the neuropathologist who conducted Webster's autopsy and subsequently diagnosed Webster with Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE), has, likewise, become a central figure in the concussion crisis. Indeed, it is frequently argued that there is something about Omalu in particular that made it possible for him to “witness” CTE when the disease entity had hitherto remained invisible to a great many medics and scientists. In this article, and drawing upon auto/biographies, I consider Omalu's self-described mode of scientific witnessing which purportedly allowed him to (re)discover CTE. I find Omalu's described objectivity to be shaped by three factors: First, the importance of “trained judgment” within which Omalu's scientific training is emphasized. Second, the infusion of religiosity within scientific practice. Third, a self-described position as an “outsider” to both football and American culture. Throughout this analysis, I pay attention not only to the ways in which Omalu's narratives depart from conventional depictions of scientific objectivity; I also note the similarities with particular bodies of social scientific work, most notably within a feminist “turn to care” in Science and Technology Studies (STS) and related standpoint epistemologies. Following these analyses, I argue that, first, Omalu's writing affords the dead a “response-ability” that is often absent within analyses of the concussion crisis and, second, that a focus upon diverse forms of objectivity, such as those described in Omalu's work, complements existing work into concussion science that has foregrounded scientific conflict of interest.

show abstract

“…relation to contact sports and military personnel [36]. Mohammed Ali, possibly the greatest heavyweight boxer of all times was believed to suffer from Dementia Pugilistica, and it is thought that he died of its complications in June 2016 [37][38]. Aaron Hernandez, a former NFL (National Football League) player and a convicted murderer was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.…”

Section: Open Access Journal Of Gerontology and Geriatric Medicinementioning

confidence: 99%

Head Injury, Concussion and Dementia - The Deadly Triad

Yousaf,

Baldwin

2022

OAJGGM

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The link between head injury and Alzheimer's disease is a contentious and evolving topic of debate. With the recent death from dementia of several former members of England's 1966 Football World Cup winning team, there is an increasing focus on the long-term consequences of sports related head injury. Much of the emphasis has been on the impact of concussion on the health and welfare of athletes. This article will explore the effect of mild to severe traumatic brain injury and its connection with neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease and Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE). The latter was diagnosed in more than a hundred former National Football League (NFL) players. We will scrutinize current literature from dementia studies that has suggested racial and ethnic differences in the trends in dementia prevalence. More funding is required to support further research into the link between Alzheimer's disease and sports participation with the goal of prevention.

show abstract

A criminal mind? A damaged brain? Narratives of criminality and culpability in the celebrated case of Aaron Hernandez

Cited by 6 publications

References 34 publications

Concussion killjoys: CTE, violence and the brain’s becoming

Concussion killjoys: CTE, violence and the brain’s becoming

“Learning to Listen to Them and Ask the Right Questions.” Bennet Omalu, Scientific Objectivities, and the Witnessing of a Concussion Crisis

Head Injury, Concussion and Dementia - The Deadly Triad

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About