Protected: 3. A Look in Time: Narrative Temporalities and Neuroqueer History

Panellists: Mars da Silva Saude, Bogi Takács Perelmutter, Ash Paley, Nat Paterson
Chair: Jonathan Dunn

Mars da Silva Saude | Resistant neuroqueer temporalities and divergent durational images 

Abstract: This presentation is based on ongoing and in-progress practice-based research into long exposure photochemical photography, darkroom-based 16mm film practice, and the extended temporalities of experimental landscape films. The intersecting concern is duration that diverges from the “norm.” These different durations open up possibilities to explore image making from neurodivergent and neuroqueer perspectives that offer resistance to dominant conceptions of time in the Capitalocene.  

In The Dialectic of Duration, Gaston Bachelard posits a potential “happy age” where more effort is put into organising inaction than meeting active social demands; where repose, instead of action, is a core value. To Bachelard, it is clear that different psyches experience a plurality of durations and rhythms. These differences result in discontinuity, gaps, and a heterogenous experience of time, in opposition to the conception of duration as a continuous flow as per Henri Bergson. This heterogenous duration can be understood to apply to both experimental time-based media practice and experiences of time from a neurodivergent perspective. While clinical models in autism and ADHD research, for example, often posit differences in temporal perception as a challenge for neurodivergent individuals and their support systems to overcome, this research explores their creative and systemically critical potential. 

Drawing on work in feminist disability studies and “crip time,” and Jack Halberstam’s critical conceptualisation of a queer time that challenges normative power structures, this paper will discuss different experiences of temporality for neuroqueer bodies, and how this mode of experiencing time presents a challenge to destructive capitalist logics of productivity, as well as the temporality of neoliberal academia. Alternative photochemical film and photography practices can be a space to explore these resistant forms of temporality. 

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Bogi Takács Perelmutter | Examining Muriel Jaeger's Sisyphus: Or, the Limits of Psychology (1929) as an early work of neurodiversity theory 

Abstract: Muriel Jaeger (1892-1969) was a British novelist, playwright, nonfiction author and futurist best known for being an early woman writer of science fiction. Her nonfiction work *Sisyphus: Or, the Limits of Psychology* (1929), almost entirely unknown today, appeared in the *To-day and To-morrow* series -- these short books of futurist nonfiction by leading intellectuals of the era were speculating on the future of various areas of life. In this presentation I will discuss how *Sisyphus* presaged several concepts like the present-day neurodiversity movement and the social model of disability, while building a theory of psychology that emphasized metacognition, presenting the mind as "the rounding of consciousness upon itself" (p. 77). Jaeger sharply criticized both behaviorists like Watson and psychoanalysts like Freud, including from a feminist standpoint. She explained how her era's approach to mental variation was "as arbitrary as our judicial code" (p. 14) and how this resulted in the pathologization of "type[s] of mental development," (ibid.) criticisms that are still applicable today. I examine Jaeger's positionality as a chronically ill and disabled woman author who -- as far as it can be reconstructed -- was likely queer; and how this affected her perspective on psychology, mental health and illness. Jaeger's positionality influenced how she conceptualized the relationship of psychology to other domains of human endeavor including literature, philosophy and even advertising. I also analyze how the neurodivergence-related concepts explicated in *Sisyphus* shed light on Jaeger's fiction, especially the science fiction novel *The Man With Six Senses* (1927). This novel remains in print to this day and is considered an early feminist classic. I will demonstrate how much of the plot of *The Man With Six Senses* focuses on neurodivergent and disabled community-building, an aspect of the novel that has so far been undiscussed in the scholarly literature. 

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Ash Paley | Neuroqueer History? An Argument for the Study of Premodern Neurodiversity. 

Abstract: The academic study of history has usually excluded mention of neurodivergence and minority neurotypes before the modern and contemporary periods due to the rejection of retrospective diagnosis. The exceptions to this are the study of madness and intellectual disability which remain fruitful areas of discussion but are not themselves discussed in relation to the neurodiversity movement. This limits the study of premodern neurominorities to individuals in distress or in some way considered diseased. A framing of this nature does not allow exploration of examples of flourishing by neurominorities and feeds into the pathology paradigm. However, these are not the only ways that neurodiversity can be investigated in the premodern period. Queer, trans, and crip histories show potential ways the accusations of anachronism can be overcome. Further, the reluctance to engage with neurodivergent history represents an epistemic injustice which prevents contemporary neurodivergent people and communities from forming connections with the past and from developing ideas about shared pasts. This paper will discuss the need for neurodivergent history and possible methodological avenues which may be used to that end. This will include methodological techniques taken from queer, trans, and crip historical study. It will use examples taken both from medieval history and the modern neurodiversity movement to solidify the potentials of the study of premodern neurodivergence and neuroqueerness and premodern connections with the neurodivergent present. The paper will also seek to challenge the fear of retrospective diagnosis by reframing it as peer identification and exploring the ramifications of shifting power balances in the practice of diagnosis of historical figures. 

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Nat Paterson | Monstrous Divergence: Neurodiversity Inclusion and Léopold Chauveau (1870-1940) 

Abstract: This paper argues that the creative worldview expressed by Chauveau, a long-neglected visual artist and writer who in 2020 was the subject of a major exhibition at the Musée d’Orsay, is of great theoretical and practical relevance to critical neurodiversity studies. I take as my starting point Chauveau’s lifetime ‘special interest’ in monstrosity and his creation of sympathetic sculpted ‘monsters’ as companions, to whom he writes in the second person, lamenting how they live peacefully, ‘proud to resemble no other being’, yet for him ‘that pride brings only torment and misery’ [Archival document, Musée d’Orsay, DOC.MO.2019.15.26.] 

My paper relates Chauveau’s expression of pride amidst the ‘torment’ caused by social exclusion and his solution of creating an inclusive community to the neurodiversity movement, situating both within the context of an ecologically conscious (‘being’/ ‘biodiversity’) and intersectional reaction to the pathology paradigm. I discuss Léopold Chauveau’s fraught relationship with his right-wing father Auguste, a professor of pathology who studied ‘monsters…as deviations from a norm’ and pressurised his son into a traumatic medical career [Stéphane Audeguy, ‘Préface’ in Paysages monstrueux (Paris: Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 2020), n.p.]. This leads into a discussion of intersectional creative resistance and especially anti-fascism, with Chauveau identifying his creations as ‘quite unmonstrous’ compared to the eugenicist Hitler [Diary, Musée d’Orsay, DOC.MO.2019.15.35.]. 

The paper argues that Chauveau’s articulation of his lived experience is a valuable corrective to stereotypes of ‘outsider’ art that continue to influence museums, hindering progress towards inclusivity, which the International Council of Museums identifies as an urgent aim [ICOM, 'Museum Definition', 2022, available at: https://icom.museum/en/resources/standards-guidelines/museum-definition/(Accessed 28 February 2025)]. Referring to interviews I conducted with artists who created work for the exhibition, and with others who responded to my presentation at Glasgow charity Project Ability, I discuss opportunities to connect artists and overcome hierarchies. 

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Speaker Bios:

Mars da Silva Saude: Mars da Silva Saude is an artist researcher engaging with documentation, marginal histories, landscape, speculative fiction, radical politics, and text(s), often using photochemical film as a method to complicate ideas of linear progress and question capitalist temporalities. Their time-based media practice includes film, photography, illustrated lecture performances, sound, and programming work with artist collectives in Bristol and Rotterdam. Saude received an MFA from the University of Colorado at Boulder, and currently lectures in Documentary Film Practice and co-ordinates Labordy Ffilm Aber at Aberystwyth University. 

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Bogi Takács Perelmutter: Dr. Bogi Takács Perelmutter (e/em or they/them) is an Assistant Teaching Professor of Slavic, German and Eurasian Studies and Jewish Studies at the University of Kansas. Dr. Perelmutter is also affiliated with the Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction. E is a disabled and chronically ill immigrant from Hungary to the United States. 

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Ash Paley: I am a PhD student at the University of Leeds studying medieval mysticism through a neuroqueer lens. I am also autistic, ADHD, and transgender. I am interested in queerness and neurodiversity in the arts and humanities and the methods used to study these areas.

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Nat Paterson: Nat Paterson (University of Glasgow, autism/dyspraxia) is finalising his PhD thesis, ‘Léopold Chauveau (1870-1940), Monstrous Diversity, and Widening Access’, which relates Chauveau’s creative responses to trauma and social alienation with current challenges in neurodiversity and mental health inclusion. Nat has collaborated with Glasgow disability arts charity Project Ability, and with Orsay staff during a research residency at the Institut Giacometti, Paris, experiences he discusses at https://sgsahresearch.com/portfolio/nat-paterson/. In 2024, Nat participated in the ‘Shifting Societies, Changing Museums’ Summer School. Nat recently published his translation and introduction to an essay in Art in Translation after winning the journal’s Student Prize. 

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