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Neurodivergent people often feel they don’t belong. This is not just an emotional response to neurotypical norms, but a matter of “misfit” embodiment in particular places (Garland-Thomson, 2011). Recent empirical research adopting a neurodiversity critique is beginning to examine neurodivergent spatialities in increasingly substantive ways. Often space is a static container for the discourses and practices that shape neurodivergent people’s lives. Unmarked whiteness often accompanies this approach to space. However, space becomes a much more active presence when examining the experiences of racialized neurodivergent people. Strategies of spatial containment have long been central to regulating racialized and other oppressed groups. However, “container-space” on its own is inadequate for understanding the different risks and outcomes that different neurodivergent individuals face, especially when exhibiting neurodivergent comportment and emotions. Other work builds on these critical insights by seeking to affirm neurodivergent ways of relating to the world. Here, often borrowing from ideas of queer and crip time, scholars show how space can shape how people are continually becoming as embodied subjects over time. This scholarship invites us to ask how specifically neurodivergent forms of agency might emerge from the mutual relationship between embodiment, time and space. Deeper engagement with material space through intersectional thinking and more robust attention to space when exploring alternative temporalities are needed not only to understand how neurodivergent people can be misfits, but also how they may thrive.

Neurodivergent people often feel they don't belong. This is not just an emotional response to neurotypical norms, but a matter of "misfit" embodiment in particular places (Garland-Thomson, 2011). Recent empirical research adopting a neurodiversity critique is beginning to examine neurodivergent spatialities in increasingly substantive ways. Often space is a static container for the discourses and practices that shape neurodivergent people's lives. Unmarked whiteness often accompanies this approach to space. However, space becomes a much more active presence when examining the experiences of racialized neurodivergent people. Strategies of spatial containment have long been central to regulating racialized and other oppressed groups. However, "container-space" on its own is inadequate for understanding the different risks and outcomes that different neurodivergent individuals face, especially when exhibiting neurodivergent comportment and emotions. Other work builds on these critical insights by seeking to affirm neurodivergent ways of relating to the world. Here, often borrowing from ideas of queer and crip time, scholars show how space can shape how people are continually becoming as embodied subjects over time. This scholarship invites us to ask how specifically neurodivergent forms of agency might emerge from the mutual relationship between embodiment, time and space. Deeper engagement with material space through intersectional thinking and more robust attention to space when exploring alternative temporalities are needed not only to understand how neurodivergent people can be misfits, but also how they may thrive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This article draws on qualitative interviews with one autistic student about his experiences accessing higher education, focusing on disability disclosure as a time-based rhetorical practice. I explore how Mike exploits the kairotic dimensions of autism disclosure in risky and contradictory ways to pursue his larger educational goals. Autistic students are often assumed to be unacceptably awkward, incapable of intentional stances, and fundamentally not rhetorical. These assumptions, however, obscure the complexity inherent in their rhetorical practices; this complexity is particularly salient in the timing of disability disclosure. I argue that Mike embodies a temporal expertise that expands the concept of crip time – often conceived as a delay or extension of normative time frames – to encompass time as a rhetorical resource for disabled rhetors.

This article re-evaluates the case of Hugh Blair of Borgue (1747-8) from the standpoint of neurodiversity pride. This case was brought by John Blair against his older brother the laird Hugh Blair of Borgue. John successfully argued that Hugh was an Idiot incapable of marriage. As a result, Hugh's marriage to Nickie Mitchell was annulled and their children disinherited; John and his descendants now stood to inherit Hugh's estates. Some modern criticism has suggested that Hugh was autistic. During the court case, Hugh's life and way of behaving and communicating, were often painfully critiqued. Exploring an autistic reading of Hugh that emphasises his creativity and love of imitation, I argue that attempting to "diagnose" him with autism using modern diagnostic criteria can replicate some of the harsh judgements that the court made against him. I end by suggesting that, as Hugh loved to copy, we might spend some time in our lives imitating Hugh. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fruitful connections can be made between Disability Studies and post-conflict transitional justice, two areas of scholarship concerned with human rights and the impacts of violence that have rarely been brought into critical dialogue with one another. For over a decade, one of the world's largest and best-known autism organizations, the US-based Autism Speaks, has been subject to criticisms and boycotts by autistic self-advocates and their allies. This article describes the forms of harm attributed to the organization, arguing that these harms can be viewed through the lens of what transitional justice scholar Jill Stauffer calls "ethical loneliness": "the experience of being abandoned by humanity compounded by the experience of not being heard" (2015b, 1). I argue that Autism Speaks's recent reforms and responses to criticism, in focusing largely on present-day organizational policies and structures, fail to grasp the full temporal dimensions of ethical loneliness or the importance of addressing past injustice.

As increasing numbers of autistic adults are seeking and gaining employment, the experiences of autistic adults in the workplace is critical to consider. Autistic adults encounter a range of challenges in obtaining and keeping employment and often report a range of negative experiences in the workplace. The current research reports the results from a large, national exploratory study on the experiences of autistic adults in the workplace as well as their thoughts on how to improve these experiences for the autism community. In particular, participants reported challenges with the interviewing process, which requires very specific and consistent social behaviors, as well as with feeling comfortable disclosing one's autistic status at work. These challenges are often connected with public misperceptions about autism. The article discusses these challenges as well as strategies to improve autism-related understanding and awareness in the workplace. This work is critical to conversations about diversity in the workplace.

This paper investigates what it is to understand human differences in terms of deficits and examines criticisms of this approach. In the past few decades, across many fields of inquiry and outside the academy there has been a surge of interest in critiquing "the deficit view" of all manner of group differences and deviations from the norm. But what exactly is meant by "deficit view" and related terms when they figure in accounts of human differences? Do critics of the deficit view claim that they are never appropriate or that particular applications of the approach are inappropriate? The aim of this paper is twofold: to identify and articulate some of the conceptual issues at the heart of debates about deficit approaches and to examine how these issues matter. Autism is my focus case. As we will see, many critiques of the deficit view of autism tend to characterize what is problematic about taking a deficit view in terms of the personal and social harm that deficit views can or do effect. One important upshot of my discussion, I argue, is that there is another kind of drawback to deficit thinking that is independent of the deficit view's potential negative personal and social consequences, a drawback that deserves serious consideration and sustained critical attention: in some instances, at least, deficit views impede scientific and philosophical progress in our understanding of the phenomena themselves. Thus, articulating and assessing deficit approaches is of practical and theoretical importance.

In this chapter, Varga discusses a "stuck" debate between fine-grained definitions requiring more detailed alignment on how things are done, which lines up with weaker embodied cognition statements, and coarser, more functional definitions which allow for much stronger embodied cognition statements. Keywords: neurodiversity; cognition EN neurodiversity cognition N.PAG N.PAG 1 04/03/21 20210101 NES 210101 Somogy Varga's I Scaffolded Minds: Integration and Disintegration i motivates and defends the actively scaffolded cognition (ASC) framework, considering cognition as inseparable from the body and possibly resources beyond the body. In this chapter, Varga defines both ontological and epistemological inseparability, which he holds as key theses for an embodied cognition framework. [Extracted from the article]

However, while both I Neurodiversity Studies i and I Authoring Autism i engage in practices of neuroqueering, Yergeau's book engages more explicitly with queerness and queer studies. The term "neuroqueer" was coined by Nick Walker and Athena Lynn Michaels-Dillon, and further developed by M. Remi Yergeau in their groundbreaking 2018 book I Authoring Autism: On Rhetoric and Neurological Queerness i . Keywords: neurodiversity EN neurodiversity N.PAG N.PAG 1 04/03/21 20210101 NES 210101 Within academia, the term "neurodiversity" has become almost exclusively associated with the field of critical autism studies. [Extracted from the article]

This article draws on qualitative interviews with one autistic student about his experiences accessing higher education, focusing on disability disclosure as a time-based rhetorical practice. I explore how Mike exploits the kairotic dimensions of autism disclosure in risky and contradictory ways to pursue his larger educational goals. Autistic students are often assumed to be unacceptably awkward, incapable of intentional stances, and fundamentally not rhetorical. These assumptions, however, obscure the complexity inherent in their rhetorical practices; this complexity is particularly salient in the timing of disability disclosure. I argue that Mike embodies a temporal expertise that expands the concept of crip time – often conceived as a delay or extension of normative time frames – to encompass time as a rhetorical resource for disabled rhetors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fruitful connections can be made between Disability Studies and post-conflict transitional justice, two areas of scholarship concerned with human rights and the impacts of violence that have rarely been brought into critical dialogue with one another. For over a decade, one of the world's largest and best-known autism organizations, the US-based Autism Speaks, has been subject to criticisms and boycotts by autistic self-advocates and their allies. This article describes the forms of harm attributed to the organization, arguing that these harms can be viewed through the lens of what transitional justice scholar Jill Stauffer calls "ethical loneliness": "the experience of being abandoned by humanity compounded by the experience of not being heard" (2015b, 1). I argue that Autism Speaks's recent reforms and responses to criticism, in focusing largely on present-day organizational policies and structures, fail to grasp the full temporal dimensions of ethical loneliness or the importance of addressing past injustice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As increasing numbers of autistic adults are seeking and gaining employment, the experiences of autistic adults in the workplace is critical to consider. Autistic adults encounter a range of challenges in obtaining and keeping employment and often report a range of negative experiences in the workplace. The current research reports the results from a large, national exploratory study on the experiences of autistic adults in the workplace as well as their thoughts on how to improve these experiences for the autism community. In particular, participants reported challenges with the interviewing process, which requires very specific and consistent social behaviors, as well as with feeling comfortable disclosing one's autistic status at work. These challenges are often connected with public misperceptions about autism. The article discusses these challenges as well as strategies to improve autism-related understanding and awareness in the workplace. This work is critical to conversations about diversity in the workplace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates what it is to understand human differences in terms of deficits and examines criticisms of this approach. In the past few decades, across many fields of inquiry and outside the academy there has been a surge of interest in critiquing "the deficit view" of all manner of group differences and deviations from the norm. But what exactly is meant by "deficit view" and related terms when they figure in accounts of human differences? Do critics of the deficit view claim that they are never appropriate or that particular applications of the approach are inappropriate? The aim of this paper is twofold: to identify and articulate some of the conceptual issues at the heart of debates about deficit approaches and to examine how these issues matter. Autism is my focus case. As we will see, many critiques of the deficit view of autism tend to characterize what is problematic about taking a deficit view in terms of the personal and social harm that deficit views can or do effect. One important upshot of my discussion, I argue, is that there is another kind of drawback to deficit thinking that is independent of the deficit view's potential negative personal and social consequences, a drawback that deserves serious consideration and sustained critical attention: in some instances, at least, deficit views impede scientific and philosophical progress in our understanding of the phenomena themselves. Thus, articulating and assessing deficit approaches is of practical and theoretical importance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Autism and related disorders are increasingly discussed in disability literature as the field is more confidently discussing intellectual and developmental impairments. The current paper describes how autism is considered within critical issues in the disability literature with a special focus on disability definition and politics of identity. These issues are central to discussions of human rights from a disability perspective, one which autism is uniquely situated to address. Definitions and traits of autism are related to physical, intellectual, and psychiatric differences making this diagnostic or identity category well suited to address to the issues of all disabilities groups. Using autism as a basis, a model for human rights is built around the interconnected traits of interdependence, individuality, and a consideration for the sphere of human diversity. Though developed around autism, the paper shows how the model is applicable to all states of being and addresses major disability issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines challenges to the quality of life experienced by autistic adults.(n1) The author, who is an autistic researcher, first shares how a neurodiversity perspective offers an important alternative to the deficit model of autism. Whereas the deficit model portrays autistic people as ill, broken, and in need of fixing, the neurodiversity perspective portrays it as a form of human diversity with associated strengths and difficulties. The article's discussion then shifts to presenting Schalock's (2000) quality of life framework as a neurodiversity-compatible lens through which domains of quality of life can be viewed. The article analyzes in detail these core domains in relation to the lives of autistic adults. The author suggests that a collaborative approach between professionals/researchers and autistic adults is needed to develop meaningful solutions to these challenges, and he presents possibilities for collaboration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This piece investigates "typical autism essays" and their rhetorical commonplaces, their largely neurotypical discourse conventions. In the field of rhetoric and composition, circular metaphors in discourse community theory resemble popular representations of autism as a low-functioning/high-functioning binary. Each field-specific conversation attempts to define groups of people (student writers, autistics) as though there are hard and fast boundaries to one's identity. I posit that typical autism essays obscure issues of power as well as their neurotypically-defined genre conventions, effectively denying autistic self-advocates a place in the conversations that concern them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]