Protected: 2. Neuroqueer Readings and Aesthetics

Panellists: Catherine Smale, Denise Henschel, Liselotte Van der Gucht
Chair: Mars da Silvia Saude

Catherine Smale | A Neuroqueer Reading of Stefanie-Lahya Aukongo’s 'Buchstabengefühle: Eine poetische Einmischung' (Letter Feelings: A Poetic Intervention, 2018) 

Abstract: This paper contributes to the critical turn in neurodiversity studies by developing a neuroqueer reading of the poetry of Stefanie-Lahya Aukongo (b. 1978), a German-Namibian author and activist who describes herself as ‘femme, phat, disabled, Black, nonconformist [and] intersectional’. Aukongo’s poetry volume 'Buchstabengefühle: Eine poetische Einmischung' (Letter Feelings: A Poetic Intervention, 2018) reflects on the author’s multiple, intersecting subject positions and her experiences of everyday racism and ableism. The volume is multilingual, containing passages in German, English and Oshiwambo, and multimedial, employing QR codes that link to audio files to be listened to alongside the printed texts.  

In this paper, I will argue that Aukongo’s choice of a multilingual and multimedial poetic form is fundamental to her understanding of poetry as a liberatory practice. I will begin by analysing some of the programmatic statements that the author makes in the prologue to the volume, in order to show her choice of form is bound up with her construction of an intersectional subject position that resists reification into discrete, separable entities. Drawing on insights from crip theory (e.g. McRuer, Kafer) and studies of neuroqueer poetics (e.g. Rodas, Yergeau), I will then show how this poetic form disrupts the linearity of neuronormative reading processes, opening up multiple possible ways of encountering the poetic word. This disruption, I argue, gives expression to what Alison Kafer terms ‘crip time’ or ‘flex time’ – that is, the particular ‘reorientation to time’ that occurs when one ‘recognises how expectations of “how long things take” are based on very particular minds and bodies’. Overall, it is my contention that the multimodal form of Aukongo’s poems challenges the social norms that have resulted in her being multiply marginalized and opens up the possibility of imagining radically diverse ways of being in the world. 

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Denise Henschel | Neuroqueer Aesthetics: Challenging the ‘Neurotypical Bias’ in the German Aesthetic Tradition 

Abstract: Through a reading of contemporary German-language literary and cinematic texts, this paper critically examines what I conceive of as a ‘neurotypical bias’ in the German aesthetic tradition. While the German aesthetic tradition from Immanuel Kant to Theodor W. Adorno has been foundational to Western conceptualizations of art, perception, and cognition, it instantiates and perpetuates neuro-normative conceptions about sensory and temporal experience that privilege neurotypical ways of being-in and knowing-of the world. This bias manifests itself in three ways: the theorization of a shared aesthetic experience as mono- and linear-sensual, the privileging of certain modes of sensation and communication, and the emphasis on coherent and linear spatio-temporal experiences. In contrast to this, I argue that works of art have the potential to enable neuroqueer forms of being-in and knowing-of the world. Drawing on Melanie Yergeau’s conception of neuroqueerness as that which ‘defies normalcy and social order’, I analyse how German-language literature and film create a counter-tradition through ‘neuroqueer aesthetics’. In this paper, I will focus on temporality and will analyse the ways in which neuroqueer aesthetics produce and enable neuroqueer temporalities. I argue that these aesthetic strategies effectively challenge Kant’s neurotypical conception of time as unified, continuous, and linear. By reconsidering aesthetic theory through a neuroqueer lens, this paper contributes to critical neurodiversity studies by highlighting the ways in which the German aesthetic tradition has normalised neurotypicality while simultaneously revealing how works of art can disrupt these norms and instantiate alternative modes for being-in and knowing-of the world. This intervention challenges us to reimagine aesthetics beyond neurotypical frameworks and to recognize how artistic practice can serve as a site of neurodivergent liberation. 

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Liselotte Van der Gucht | Neuroqueer Feminism in Marlen Haushofer’s Nowhere Ending Sky 

Abstract: In her neuroqueer feminist analysis of Borderline Personality Disorder, Merri Lisa Johnson highlights the need for a new theoretical framework to understand experiences of cognitive atypicality (Johnson 2021). Neuroqueer feminism challenges traditional theory by adopting an intersectional, bottom-up approach that centers lived experiences and transforms differences that society conditions us to disavow as “shameful”, “incomprehensible” or “incurable” into something “knowable” (637, 642). A powerful means of accessing the phenomenological dimensions of these experiences is through first-person accounts, such as Johnson’s own BPD memoir, Girl in Need of a Tourniquet (2010).  

This talk, however, shifts focus to fictional, not necessarily self-identifying representations of cognitive atypicality – specifically, in the work of Austrian author Marlen Haushofer (1920-1970). Often pushed aside as “Hausfrauenliteratur” [housewife literature], Haushofer’s narratives depict women suffering under patriarchal suppression. The feminist potential of Haushofer’s novels (especially Nowhere Ending sky) has been largely dismissed by moralizing and pathologizing readings that cast female protagonists as hysterical or neurasthenic (Brüns 1998; Landfester 2000). While Haushofer’s work has recently inspired innovative approaches within literary studies, such as ecocriticism (Ní Dhúill 2022) or posthumanism (Littler 2022), I argue that a neuroqueer feminist perspective may enrich scholarship on Haushofer specifically. In order to consider the broader methodological concerns regarding actively neuroqueering literary texts containing implicit portrayals of cognitive atypicality, I will also draw on Lea Schneider’s concept of “radikale Verletzbarkeit” (2024) [radical vulnerability] to reframe as difference that which is often seen as weakness or deficit. While the concept of disability continues to be met with hesitation in the German-speaking context, due to the historical legacy of eugenicist practices during the Third Reich such as the “Aktion T4” (Poore 2007), the implicit nature of the portrayal of neuroqueerness in Nowhere ending sky will be shown to be due precisely to persistent threats of exclusion and institutionalisation aimed at reinforcing neuronormativity. 

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Speaker Bios:

Catherine Smale: Catherine Smale is Senior Lecturer in German Studies at King’s College London. She has published widely on 20th- and 21st-century German women writers, including a monograph entitled 'Phantom Images: The Figure of the Ghost in the Work of Irina Liebmann and Christa Wolf' (MHRA 2013). She is currently leading a collaborative project at King's on neurodiverse pedagogies and developing a book project on neuroqueer aesthetics in contemporary German-language literature. 

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Denise Henschel: Denise Henschel holds a PhD in German Studies from the University of Cambridge and is currently a Teaching Fellow in German at the University of Warwick, having previously taught literature, film, and German language at the University of Cambridge, the University of Warwick, and Cardiff University. Dr Henschel’s research specialisation lies in 20th- and 21st-century literature, film and visual culture from the German-speaking world, with a particular focus on gender and queer theory, aesthetic theory, neuroqueer theory, and disability studies. 

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Liselotte Van der Gucht: Liselotte Van der Gucht obtained a Master’s Degree in English and German Linguistics and Literary Studies from Ghent University, where she is a member of the Department of Literary Studies. As a PhD student on the research project funded by the Research Foundation - Flanders (FWO) “Exquisite Defects. Detoxing the Female Literary Genius at the Crossroads of Neurophenomenology and Neurodiversity” (2020-2025), she explores how neurodiversity surfaces in German literary texts by female authors. Her research interests include disability studies, neurodiversity studies, and cognitive literary studies. She has published on the representation of neurodiversity in Dutch, English, and German prose. 

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