Protected: 4. Neuroqueer Worldmaking: Legal and Performed Resistances

Panellists: Rebecca Jiggens, Jess Orense
Chair: Megan Fereday

Rebecca Jiggens | The Law Thinks in Neurotypical: Inferential Injustice, Legal Whiteness, and the Production of Neurodivergent Precarity 

Abstract: What happens when the law itself is neurotypical? Legal systems do not merely interpret neurodivergence; they produce it, shaping the conditions under which neurodivergent workers are rendered precarious, intelligible, or expendable. This paper interrogates judicial reasoning in UK employment law as a site of inferential injustice, where courts construct neurodivergence through legal logics that obscure, constrain, or erase workplace inaccessibility. Drawing on constructivist grounded theory analysis of case law, I argue tribunals systematically misrecognise neurodivergence—not only through outdated medicalised framings, but through legal formalism that privileges managerial discretion, reinforces neurotypical supremacy, and subordinates intersectional experiences of neurodivergence to white, class-privileged norms of workplace behaviour. 

This paper situates legal decision-making within neurodiversity discourse, interrogating how it remains shaped by whiteness, individualism, and neoliberal reformism. While neurodiversity studies challenge deficit-based models of cognition, they have too often centred white, middle-class articulations of neurodivergence, neglecting how race, gender, and class structure access to diagnosis and legal recognition. Through critical legal studies, Black feminist thought, and the neurodivergent critique of neoliberal inclusionism, I examine how employment law’s focus on ‘reasonable adjustments’ (Equality Act 2010, s.20) not only reproduces neurotypical dominance but privileges forms of neurodivergence most legible to white institutional norms. Positioning judicial reasoning as an agential cut (Barad, 2007), I demonstrate how legal epistemologies foreclose radical workplace transformation, entrenching racialised and classed exclusions. 

Rather than advocating for minor adjustments within existing legal paradigms, this paper calls for a rupture in how neurodivergence is conceptualised within law—foregrounding intersectionality, collective access, and resistance to legal reasoning’s disciplining functions. What might a neurodivergent legal imagination look like beyond whiteness? And what forms of disruption become possible when we refuse to let the law think in neurotypical? 

Jess Orense | Exploring Madness and 'Othered' Experiences through Neuroqueer Ethnodrama 

Abstract: This will be an interactive presentation and performance, offering an immersive exploration of Mad identities and marginalisation through arts-based methods. Drawing from my PhD work-in-progress, I will perform short excerpts of a co-created script, shaped by interviews with individuals who are multiply marginalised (e.g. on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, gender identity and expression, sexuality, etc.) and who identify as Mad, diagnosed or labelled mentally ill, neurodivergent, disabled, or as survivors (MMINDS). These monologue-style performances, interspersed throughout the presentation, serve as a means of storytelling and resistance, challenging dominant narratives surrounding 'mental health' and disability. 

Alongside these performances, I will provide insight into my arts-based, participatory approach, discussing the potential of ethnodrama to centre Mad and neurodivergent voices, disrupt medicalised frameworks, and foster new ways of knowing and being. To deepen engagement, I will also facilitate a short, relaxed reflective exercise, inviting attendees to participate in a way that suits their needs, whether individually, in pairs, or small groups. This exercise aims to encourage critical and creative responses to the themes explored, making space for collective reflection on the intersections of theatre, neurodiversity, and Mad Studies. 

By integrating performance with participation and discussion, this session seeks to spark dialogue on the transformative power of Mad and neuroqueer approaches to theatre as a method of research and activism within Critical Neurodiversity Studies. 

***

Speaker Bios:

Rebecca Jiggens: Becca is a disabled PhD researcher specialising in disability employment law. Her interdisciplinary work draws on critical legal studies, new materialist theory, and activist models of disability justice to challenge the interpretive limits of legal protection and advocate for systemic change in judicial decision making. This research interrogates how judicial reasoning shapes materiality of disability in the workplace, through inferential injustice and legal epistemologies that constrain the transformative potential of the Equality Act 2010. Becca founded Just Reasonable Ltd, a non-profit DPO law firm & the Disabled Workers Union; her day job is Director of The Work Inclusion Project Ltd, supplying specialist in-work support to academics and professionals.

-

Jess Orense: Jess Orense is a non-binary neurodivergent service (ref)user and storyteller from the Philippines, now based in Scotland. They are a funded PhD student at Queen Margaret University, co-creating autoethnographic theatre to explore Mad identities and marginalisation. Jess earned an MA in Drama Therapy from New York University (2019) and has worked with NYU Theatre & Health Lab and National Queer Theater (US). They have experience in peer-led crisis support and grassroots solidarity groups. A member of NEUROMANCERS, Neuk Collective, and the Scottish Neurodiverse Performance Network, Jess is committed to fostering inclusive, anti-oppressive, and non-carceral spaces for community care. 

***

Zoom Meeting ID: XXX

Online passcode: XXX

Telephone passcode: XXX