Protected: 3. Decolonial Interventions in Critical Neurodiversity Studies

Panellists: Mat Thompson, Imane Kostet, Mustafa Baqai
Chair: Lisa Fernandes

Mat Thompson | Against Neurodiversity: Problems with a Paradigm 

Abstract: This paper seeks to ask the question, how can we contextualise neurodiversity within coloniality, and what are the epistemological consequences of doing so? Drawing directly from decolonial and postcolonial scholarship, such as Mignolo, Spivak, and Singh, I seek to destabilise the epistemological and discursive terms on which we understand and confer neurological difference and to argue that it is only through such a destabilisation that we can fully operationalise a productive neurodiverse politics. Building on recent work by Nair et al (2019), I do not propose a complete abandonment of neurodiversity as a paradigm or as a field of scholarship, but instead suggest a recalibration of the discursive conditions on which we build a politics. I take as my site of analyses the ‘pathology paradigm’ and locate my challenge to recent neurodiversity and neuroqueer scholarship in the epistemological exigencies that emerge when we examine this through a decolonial and postcolonial analysis. In using conceptual language such as ‘abjection’, ‘subalterneity’, and ‘bare-life’ and applying their contexts of biopolitics and colonial power, I wish to argue that we can begin to see that the ‘pathology paradigm’ in fact becomes the ‘coloniality paradigm’ and that such a shift necessitates a rethinking of its inverse, the ‘neurodiversity paradigm’. This work is located within psychosocial, decolonial, and feminist theory and looks to bring the scholarly project of Critical Neurodiversity Studies within these conversations to challenge and constructively critique its central epistemologies in order to further a radical project of emancipation, destabilisation, and deconstruction. 

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Imane Kostet | “As an ethnically minoritised person I was a misfit anyway”: On the intersection of autism, ethnicity and race in predominantly white spaces 

Abstract: This presentation delves into the complex interplay between autism and the sense of being "out of place" that ethnically and racially minoritised groups may experience in white environments. Drawing on in-depth interviews with adults from minoritised backgrounds—alongside my own perspectives as a neurodivergent and ethnically minoritised researcher—I explore how autism is often rendered invisible within contexts shaped by racial and ethnic inequalities. 

While autism is typically recognized through difficulties in interactions, little attention has been given to how these are shaped by broader social hierarchies. Many autistic individuals from ethnically and racially minoritized backgrounds report that their struggles were often attributed to “minority stress.” At the same time, they themselves tended to interpret their difficulties as a result of feeling “out of place” in predominantly white environments, rather than recognizing them as potential autism traits. Respondents explained that challenges in understanding social norms or making friends felt like an inherent part of their everyday life as minoritised individuals, which is why many only identified as autistic later in life. Furthermore, existing information on autism or neurodiversity (e.g., through autobiographies) is primarily centered on the experiences of white autistic people, to which respondents could not always relate.  

This study, conducted in the postmigration and postcolonial contexts of Flanders (Dutch-speaking Belgium) and the Netherlands, where autistic individuals from minoritised groups are frequently misdiagnosed or underdiagnosed, highlights the ways in which autism’s visibility is shaped by social dynamics, power structures, and symbolic boundaries. By addressing a critical gap in research, this work challenges essentialist and culturalist explanations for diagnostic disparities and sheds light on the unique experiences of autistic minoritised groups navigating exclusionary social environments. 

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Mustafa Baqai | Decolonial Ruptures: Fanonian Analyses of Madness, Neurodivergence, and the Abolition of Cure 

Abstract: In neurodiversity studies, the dominant focus on medicalized frameworks of cure and normalcy fails to account for the profound colonial histories that shape the lived realities of neurodivergent bodies. This abstract draws on Fanonian analyses of madness and decolonial embodiment to interrogate the limits of the neurodiversity paradigm, offering an abolitionist critique that centers the radical potential of neurodivergence as a site of rupture and resistance. Informed by the legacies of colonial violence and the erasure of neurodivergent epistemologies, we argue that the concept of "cure" serves as a form of epistemic violence, rooted in Western biomedical paradigms that impose linear and individualized notions of health. 

By engaging Fanon’s writings on the body as a colonial wound and the lived experiences of madness as both a site of pathology and radical knowledge production, we explore how neurodivergent bodies occupy a complex position of absence and presence, disorientation and clarity. In this framework, disability becomes a rupture—an ontological break that suspends the damage-centered narratives that dominate both medical discourse and mainstream neurodiversity studies. Drawing on decolonial methodologies and cripistemologies, we propose that neurodivergent experiences are deeply connected to collective liberation struggles and that the decolonization of madness and disability requires rethinking care as relational and non-linear, rather than restorative or reformist. 

The concept of rupture, as understood through Fanonian and crip feminist perspectives, offers an understanding of neurodivergence as a form of resistance to oppressive systems, where the fragmentation of the bodymind is not seen as a deficit but as a source of radical creativity, survival, and world-building. This intervention seeks to decenter the institutionalization of care, advocating for alternative models that transcend the medical-industrial complex and offer non-hierarchical, community-based practices that foster interdependence and autonomy. 

Through arts-based practices, autoethnographic reflection, and pedagogical experimentation, we reimagine neurodivergent futures rooted in abolitionist praxis, where the very rupture that has been historically pathologized becomes the foundation for new forms of knowledge and care. This presentation challenges the damaging logic of cure and embraces neurodivergent bodies as sites of resistance, transformation, and collective liberation, advocating for a critical neurodiversity movement that aligns with broader struggles for decolonization and social justice. 

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Speaker Bios:

Mat Thompson: Mat A. Thompson is an ESRC funded PhD student in Gender, Sexuality, and Psychosocial Studies at Birkbeck, University of London. Their transdisciplinary research critically interrogates the epistemological and ontological conditions of autistic being enabled by vectors of coloniality, race, and gender. They are interested in ‘reading’ autism into colonial histories and applying psychosocial and trans theoretics to autistic subjectivities, examining the discursive foundations on which neurological difference, coloniality, and gender are produced.

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Imane Kostet: Dr. Imane Kostet is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Sociology of the University of Antwerp. Her current study critically examines how ethnicity and race become (in)visible in how autism is constructed and represented as both a medical category and an identity. Using qualitative methods, it seeks to understand how autism becomes 'ethnicised' or 'racialised' through 1) autobiographical books, blogs, and vlogs about autism; 2) the perspectives, experiences, and practices of diagnosticians; and 3) how these constructions are challenged by ethnically and racially minoritised autistic adults. 

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Mustafa Baqai: Mustafa Baqai (they/them) is an alumnus of the Global Health Masters program at UCSD where they conducted ethnographic research as part of TASET (tracing asylum seekers' experiences & trajectories) mapping constellations of care for queer & trans migrants while navigating precarious healthcare landscapes along their journeys at the U.S Mexico border. Their art has been published in the Sins Invalid Disability Justice Coloring Book. Mustafa is also a community advisory board member for the UCI School of Med’s Abolition Medicine and Disability Justice group and co-founder of the Coalition for Abolition Medicine at UCSD.  They're interested in the intersections between critical disability/ethnic/gender studies, medicine as a carceral/colonial epistemology, and engaging decolonial methodologies & cripestemologies of care to radically re-envision care infrastructure. Their current work engages fragmentation/mad methodology, the affective politics of crip/trans rage and how ghosts of colonial pasts/present haunt and live within the archives of our bodyminds.  

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