Dr. Raymaker : I'm familiar with some of these folks but not all; this is a wonderful group for me—and others—to explore more. Would you be willing to push the futurist lens open a little further and describe how you would envision a future in which the neurodiversity paradigm changes the world for the better—what would that look like and what major pitfalls might need to be guarded against? You can push it as far-future as you'd like. In addition to being thoroughly neuroqueer, these fabulous books are also gripping space opera tales grounded in the best classic sci-fi traditions. Hoffmann has also produced a lot of extraordinarily good and thoroughly neuroqueer short stories and poetry, much of which can be found in the collection Monsters in My Mind. Shannon, D. B. (April 2019). Rhetorical inclusion beyond the “Inclusion” rhetorics: Neuroqueer literacies in Northern England. American Association for the Advancement of Curriculum Studies (AAACS). Toronto, ON. Walker gives other ways to practice neuroqueering in his blog post, which I will link below in the references. They range from theoretical thought experiments to social justice work methods. With a term this new and fluid, the possibilities are numerous. Using queer theory to examine the neurodivergent experience:

This project reviewed extant literature related to the entanglement of children’s language with place. Shannon, D. B., and Truman, S. E. (January 2024). Cosmic Beavers: Queer counter-mythologies and the practice of research-creation. European Congress of Qualitative Inquiry (ECQI). Helsinki, Finland. Shannon, D. B. (April 2019). (Neuro)queer temporalities: ‘Surprising deviants’ in northern England. American Association for the Advancement of Curriculum Studies (AAACS). Toronto, ON. A lot of people hear neuro and they think, brain. But the prefix neuro doesn't mean brain, it means nerve. The neuro in neurodiversity is most usefully understood as a convenient shorthand for the functionality of the whole bodymind and the way the nervous system weaves together cognition and embodiment. So neurodiversity refers to the diversity among minds, or among bodyminds.Truman, S. E. and Shannon, D. B. (August 2018). Queer sonic cultures: An affective walking-composing project. Capacious: Affective Inquiry/Making Space. Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Postgraduate Certificate in Education: Primary (Music semi-specialism), University of Exeter, 2012. Neuroqueering is ultimately an act of resistance. For writers like Enger and Yergeau, the questions and critiques formed by the LGBTQ+ movement and queer theory can help facilitate the emergence of a new, self-defined rhetoric of autism. Questions for you:

A key foundational aspect of this theory is reliant on the concept of “intersectionality,” coined by civil rights activist and lawyer Kimberle Crenshaw. Intersectionality refers to the interconnectedness of oppressed identities to reveal the “interactive effects of Discrimination.” (Crenshaw, 2003) She points to the similar rhetoric surrounding queer and autistic people as well and how it’s used to justify conversion therapies; she argues similarities between gay-to-straight conversion therapy for queer people and Applied Behavioral Analysis for autistic people.

Neuroqueer

On the first day of that class, Dr. Grand summed up the underlying premise of somatic psychology like so: The psyche is somatically formed and organized. Meaning, in other words, that one’s psyche and selfhood are developed through processes of bodily experience and action, with the implied corollary that new bodily experience and new habits of bodily action have the power to effect significant mental transformations. Dr. Dora M. Raymaker: You've been deeply involved in the neurodiversity movement and neurodiversity scholarship since the early days. Can you start with an overview of the concept of neurodiversity and the movement's origins, particularly for readers who might not be familiar with its genesis? Just as a cosmopolitan perspective recognizes that there’s no “normal,” “superior,” or “default” culture or ethnicity, a neurocosmopolitan perspective––or a neurocosmopolitan society––is one in which no sort of mind is privileged as “normal,” or as superior to others, or as the natural default way for a mind to be. Another prominent description of neuroqueer has to do specifically with the relations between the LGBTQ+ movement and the disability rights movement. Melanie Yergeau, who is most noted when researching this particular definition of neuroqueer, parallels society’s rhetoric surrounding the LGBTQ+ movement with the neurodivergent movement in her book, Authoring Autism: On Rhetoric and Neurological Queering. Ada Hoffmann is best known so far for the Outside series, which so far includes her first novel The Outside and its sequel The Fallen. It’s going to be at least a trilogy; there’s a third book in the works already.

Such neuroessentialism is inimical to neuroqueering, to creative neurofluidity and creative hybridity. I'm already seeing some people criticize or reject the neurodiversity movement, or even the very concept of neurodiversity, because it's too associated with essentialism and with sorting people into rigid categories by “type of brain.” But that sort of essentialism is by no means inherent to the neurodiversity paradigm; on the contrary, I think that to some degree it's a relic of the pathology paradigm that the neurodiversity movement just hasn't managed to finish outgrowing yet. Until we do outgrow it, it's a pitfall that has the unfortunate potential to derail our journey toward a neuroqueer future. Shannon, D. B. (December 2019). Contesting chrono-ableism: Neuroqueer refrainic refusals in young children’s musical compositions. Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE). Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. What are your thoughts on using queer theory as a framework for understanding the neurodivergent movement and many autistic people’s relationship with gender, self-perception, and sexuality?You talk of the embodied mind or “bodymind” frequently in your book, rather than “mind” or “neurology.” Where does your understanding of the bodymind fit into neuroqueer theory? Mind is an embodied phenomenon. The mind is encoded in the brain as ever-changing webs of neural connectivity. The brain is part of the body, interconnected with the rest of the body by a vast network of nerves. The activity of the mind and body creates changes in the brain; changes in the brain affect both mind and embodiment. Mind, brain, and embodiment are intricately entwined in a single complex system. We're not minds riding around in bodies, we're bodyminds. 4