4. Neurodivergent Interventions in the Digital Age
Hybrd
Meeting ID: 929 7383 0526
Passcode: 189052
Panellists: Megan Fereday, Kazimir Bielecki
Chair: Prerna Tolani
Megan Fereday | #Neurodiverse: a digital material-discursive approach to critical neurodiversity studies
Abstract: The neurodiversity movement has always been entangled with the digital. From the neurodiversity concept’s origins in collective online work of autistic rights activists (Botha et al., 2024) to recent influxes of user-generated neurodiversity content on social media (McDermott, 2022), neurodivergent people’s knowledge production and organisation has a deeply digital legacy.
When so much research has illustrated the modern Internet’s hostility to diverse user experiences, however (DeNardis and Hackl, 2016; Noble, 2018; Newman-Griffiths et al., 2022), the changing digital contexts of neurodiversity discourse must urgently be addressed by a critical turn in neurodiversity studies.
Research into neurodiverse Internet experiences tends towards the question of accessibility: asking how ICTs – especially social media platforms - might be adapted to better serve neurodivergent users (see Jefferies and Ahmed, 2022; Akhmedova, 2024). The underlying technoableism of this position (Shew, 2020; in Rauchberg, 2022) apprehends neurodivergent users as an untapped consumer base, whose needs might be profitably met through the right digital product.
This flattened view of neurodivergent subjects-as-consumers aligns with the ‘lite’ version of neurodiversity widely promoted by neoliberal institutions, corporate initiatives and service providers (Neumeier, 2018; Den Houten, 2018). In platform studies and in tech product development, neurodiversity-lite perspectives place uncritical emphasis on digital inclusion without ever questioning the presumed benefits of greater ICT access. Neurodiversity-lite media research diverts attention away from neurodivergent people’s historic and ongoing resistance work against the ableist Internet; work which faces ever-changing challenges in the algorithmised present.
Neurodiversity-lite cannot be separated from the digital material and discursive factors that have catalysed its prominence in neurodiversity discourse. To address this, I take cues from critical media research into Black, queer, trans and disabled technoscientific interventions to highlight how neurodivergent digital resistance work must be apprehended, and why this work must form a cornerstone of a critical turn in neurodiversity studies.
-
Kazimir Bielecki | DYSPLA_fear
Abstract: Heterodox ideation thrives in Neurodivergent Aesthetics, thoughts that go against the norm that births innovation and revolution, but artistic freedom is routinely denied by our creative industry, limiting the freedom for Neurodivergent Artists to intuitively create.
Over the last decade DYSPLA’s interactions with Neurodivergent Artists and arts institutions have found a fear of artistic heterodoxy, a fear of multipolarity, a fear of exploring innovative practices and ‘ugly’ ideas, and in too many cases, outright censorship and exclusion.
Neurodivergent creatives are delicate but extreme in our non-conformity. Definition proposes that we are those who think differently. We represent a large minority community, a diaspora mostly unknown to each other. We create on the peripheries of social norms. We explore the extremities of ideation and innovate for survival.
Based on interviews and first hand experience, this personal narrative will outline DYSPLA’s acquaintance with censorship, the relationships between other Neurodivergent Artists and Heterodoxy, and how our peers, funders and the wider creative industry shun the Neurodivergent communities instinctive non-conformity, leading to Aesthetic Masking and Cognitive Alienation.
In 2024, the Arts Council England threatened "reputational risk" for organisations linked to artists who might be “overtly political or activist”. With rising rates of anxiety and the binary ‘whose side are you on’ political climate, the “possibility of possibility" has become dangerous for our leading institutions.
We propose that Neurodivergent Artists are most likely to produce works that push the boundaries of ‘acceptability’ and are therefore most likely to self censor, alienate their intuitive aesthetic and be excluded from cultural institutions.
For aesthetic innovation and inclusivity to flourish, Neurodivergent Artists must have the space to play & entertain the heterodox. Those arts institutions who purport to support inclusivity must accept ‘offence’, the ‘harmful’ and celebrate the ‘wrong’.
Disability activism calls for acceptance beyond the ‘Empire of normality’. Aesthetic or ideation, we must be flexible to allow for play. While we obscure our ‘ugly’ ideas, through fear of discrimination, under unipolar domination we conceal the Neurodivergent Aesthetic and hide the true beauty within humanity.
***
Speaker Bios:
Megan Fereday: Megan Fereday is a nonbinary, multiply-neurodivergent PhD student based at the University of Southampton. Their PhD project (funded AHRC) investigates the role of social media platforms in young people’s queer-neurodivergent resistance practices, and explores the possibilities and potentials of digital neuroqueering among younger users. Megan is a DISCO Network Affiliate and a member of the Narratives of Neurodiversity Network, the Queer Medical Humanities Network and the Neurodivergent Humanities Network. Megan’s work has been recently published in the Journal of Cultural Analysis and Social Change.
-
Kazimir Bielecki: DYSPLA is a disabled-led, award-winning art studio, producing and developing the work of Neurodivergent storymakers. Supported by the Arts Council England and the British Council, DYSPLA makes art and conducts research into the Neurodivergent Aesthetic with a focus on short form narrative. We work in Digital, Print, Poetry, XR and Installation to elucidate a new artistic aesthetic defined by the cognitive difference of neurodivergence.
***
Zoom Meeting ID: XXX
Online passcode: XXX
Telephone passcode: XXX