Rayvenn Shaleigha D’Clark,

Chelsea College of Arts, UK.

Rayvenn Shaleigha D’Clark is a Digital Artist, Writer & Curator whose practice centres the reframing of black anatomy, exploring the hybridity of sculpture following the affirmation of media and the nuances of identity that pivot between hyper-visibility and invisibility, embedded in the everyday, collective experience. Her work and writing explored the theory of the ‘Body Politic’ which she uses as a catalyst to provide further visual context to the often collective perspective and self-referential questioning of black people and communities. D’Clark challenges and renegotiates the longstanding colonial gaze, dual eroticism and censorship placed upon black womxn’s bodies.

 

Website – rayvenn-dclark.com

 

A discussion of Neurological Pluralism: Invisible Disability and the challenges around Intersectional Neurodiversity:

 

*Please note that this article focuses on autism as an example of neurodivergent conditions due ONLY to the wealth of research that has been done in this area*

 

We define the body outside the mainstream fantasy of a ‘normal’ body. We characteri[s]e the body and the mind as diverse; hence, our use of the phrases bodily diversity and neurodiversity

– Invisible Disability Project

 

Neurodiversity means many different things to different people. But what are the other images of neurodiversity?

 

It is estimated that around 10 per cent of the general population is neurodivergent in some way.

 

A portmanteau of ‘neurological’ and ‘diversity’ that originated in the late 1990s, the neurodivergent paradigm asserts that neurological differences should be both recognised and respected as a social category on par with gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or disability status. Whilst the term ‘neurodiversity’ is beginning to enter the public lexicon as an umbrella term that defines individuals with a wide range of ‘hidden’ impairments (though the person may have challenges across areas) which include those related to the physical body (bodily), mental health, developmental (incl. learning difficulties) or neurological conditions – including but not limited to autism, ADHD, dyslexia, dyspraxia, bipolar, OCD – that limits a person’s movements, senses, or activities of an individual on an everyday basis. In this respect, neurodiversity characterises such conditions as normal variations in the human genome.

 

Initially embraced by individuals on the autism spectrum, the neurodiversity paradigm (though its inclusivity remains highly contested) moves away from the more ‘medieval’ explanations for a number of conditions; for example, Leo Kanner’s outdated ‘refrigerator mother theory’ (1950) an explanation for children diagnosed with autism or schizophrenia. Although now the concept of neurodiversity is being discussed much more in the public domain, it was journalist Harvey Blume who as early as 1997 (June 30, New York Times) explored the concept of neurological pluralism, foretelling the importance of the Internet in fostering the international neurodiversity movement. But to what degree is this movement intersectional?

 

‘The neurodiversity movement is culturally biased at best, racist at worst’, argues Twilah Hiari (as a self-defined ‘recovering patient’) in her Mad in America Article ‘Neurodiversity is Dead. Now What?’ (2018).

 

Whilst the neurodiversity movement declares its promotion of the self-advocacy and communal support of its members through activities such as inclusion-focused services, accommodations, communication and assistive technologies, occupational training, and independent living support, she notes significant racial, ethnic, and gender disparities within the movement, highlighting specifically differences in the identification of autism in children – more simply, Hiari alludes to the much larger number of diagnosis of intellectual disability (autism) in children born-of women of color, as well as describes an ecology in which she personally has been attacked by white neurodiversity proponents for suggesting that her experiences of autism vary in severity – hence defining an ‘abusive dynamics of autistic ‘groupthink’ within the neurodiversity movement.

 

Similarly, Maxx Crow in Anarchism: in the Conversations of Neurodiversity (2017) as a young white autistic mentally ill trans person (self-defined) meditates upon the fact that autistic people of color ‘face more disparities in treatment […] due to systematic racism and how it results in people of colour having less access to healthcare.

 

Consequently, this also results in later diagnosis or self-diagnosis when being a person of colour’ (ibid.) Concurrently, it’s well documented that students of color are overrepresented in special education (Ben-Moshe & Magaña, 2014) and that white children tend to receive autism diagnoses earlier than children of color (Mandell et al., 2009).

 

In Twilah’s research surrounding how Western medicine contributes to misdiagnosis, and the biases’ of clinicians regarding issues of gender, race, class, education, religion and disability which promote a culture that dismisses the credibility of the patient’s perspective, the difference – or influence of several intersections – is one of the biggest condemnations from the opponents to the neurodiversity movement; that racial and sexual orientation differences all simultaneously influence (thus complicate) the already complex system of neurodiversity, and that this is not accounted for within the larger international movement.

 

Here, the growing concern for the need consider neurodiversity through the lense of gender-differences also becomes of principle concern as depictions of women’s bodies, minds and mobility continue to be policed; disability writer Dr Frances Ryan in her 2018 Guardian article discusses ‘how disabled women are rarely featured in the media. Even in campaigns or content that are purposely striving to include marginalised women routinely miss out those with disabilities. What if disability is the ‘last frontier of inequality’’, contemplates Ryan as hidden disabilities for the female neurodivergent Populus is something that needs to be elevated within the mainstream.

 

There is undoubtedly so much to talk about when we’re talking intersectional neurodiversity. Essentially, the bridging of intersectionality and neurodiversity both in theory + praxis, Lauren Rose Strand in Charting Relations between Intersectionality Theory and the Neurodiversity Paradigm for Disabilities Studies Quarterly, Vol 37, No 2 (2017) makes a compelling case for advocating why the neurodiversity movement has a lot of work to do to include marginalised members of the community which continues to be dominated by white, Autistic perspectives – now only nominally beginning to address the ways in which neurodivergence intersects with other dimensions of difference, like race, gender, sexuality, and class. These differences make a difference. It feels that both Crenshaw’s (1989) and Gust Yep’s explanation(s) of intersectionality, alongside Nick Walker’s articulation of neurodiversity, are incredibly useful for anyone who knows very little about either discourse.

 

Nirmala Erevelles and Andrea Minear (2010) argue that ‘intersectionality has been set up as the most appropriate analytical intervention expected to accomplish the task of mediating multiple differences’ (p. 129-130) as ‘contemporary articulations of intersectionality, foreground the interplay between individual(s) and group(s), allowing for micro, meso, and macro analyses to emerge’ (ibid.). So, because identities are always multiple and experienced in configuration with other identities, movements such as the neurodiversity movement must also be intersectional to account for all primary stakeholders. To this many can justify their hesitancy toward the movement through the numerous statistical illustrations that demonstrate the different realities of the intersectional lived experiences of neurodivergent people who inhabit multiple marginalised identities; such as Black African-American, Autistic mother, educator and autism/HIV and neurodiversity advocate Morénike Giwa Onaiwu – belonging to the Autistic Women and Non-Binary Network (AWN) – who contemplates ‘how do I know where blackness ends and neurodivergence begins?’ (2015).

 

*Here also on AWN you can find their a forthcoming autism and race anthology helmed by Lydia Brown.*

 

It becomes clear that whilst an important movement within its own right, it similarly needs to fall under the banner of ‘intersectional’ activism which is quickly and very publically forging itself as ‘the only viable pathway forward’ for activist behaviours, often seen in solidarity with self-advocates with physical disabilities, with people of colour fighting racism, and with LGBT folks battling homophobia, bullying, and violence’ (Steve Silberman)

 

So what is a progressive society to do?

 

In my opinion, I think neurodiversity is a huge paradigm shift in public discourse that is long overdue. So whilst the task of changing societal attitudes seems mammoth, ultimately it feels that it has to be society itself who needs to open the doors of communication and understanding.