Neuroqueer Heresies: Notes on the Neurodiversity Paradigm, Autistic Empowerment, and Postnormal Possibilities is a book by Nick Walker. It is a collection of his writings on autism, neurodiversity and Neuroqueer Theory.
In the book, he sets out the case for the neurodiversity paradigm over the pathology paradigm, what we might also call the neuroaffirmative model vs the medical model. Walker argues that just because one way of being seems to be more frequent, that does not mean it is the “correct” way. There are far more Chinese people than British people, but that doesn’t make being Chinese the normal nationality and being British an aberration.
Neurotypical functioning is conceptualised as a social construct: when people were described as “high/low functioning”, what we were really describing was their ability to conform to social standards. Walker makes the case that there is no such thing as a neurotypical brain, but there are people who can conform to neuronormative behaviours in a way that feels natural, and therefore enjoy the privileges of being considered normal. Just as gender is a spectrum, but many people can conform to gender-based norms well enough to enjoy the privileges that are afforded to cis individuals.
Walker also makes the case for a wide definition of neurodivergence. It includes intrinsic neurodivergence, such as autism, but also includes epilepsy, traumatic brain injury, the effects of drugs, or long-term meditation. If our brain diverges from the dominant cultural expectations, it is neurodivergent.
The book explores the difference between disability and impairment: someone may have a specific impairment, but they only have a disability in a social context. If you are deaf and you walk into a room filled with people using spoken language, you are disabled. But as someone who does not know sign language, if I walked into a room filled with people communicating in BSL, I would be the one who was disabled.
Walker suggests that professionals who have spent their lives working in the pathology paradigm find it almost impossible to make the shift to the neurodiversity paradigm. Walker goes as far as to suggest that any professional wishing to work with autistic individuals should have to have training from an autistic person who themselves is well-versed in autistic culture and the neurodiversity paradigm. This seems very reasonable given the importance of lived experience that we now recognise in many areas of society.
The journey here is a familiar one: being gay has gone from a mental illness to acceptance, and then to an understanding of the damaging impact of dominant social ideologies on minorities. Neurodivergence is going through this same process. As a community, we are building a culture, claiming an identity, and speaking out against the deficit model. Walker brings this together in the practice of neuroqueering: queering social norms as to how our brains should behave.
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Tags: autism, neurodiversity
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