Advocating sensitivity: what would a neurodivergent reading of speculative fiction tell us about unfolding futures?

The neurodiversity paradigm has raised from autism rights movement and advocates for the acknowledgment of variations in cognition and behavior as diversities and not disorders. Addressing a wide range of sensory, behavioral, and cognitive variations such as ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder), SPD (Sensory Processing Disorder), and ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder), the neurodiversity paradigm engages with a social understanding of these variations as (dis)abilities by emphasizing on the importance of recognizing them as different ways of being, while at the same time foregrounding the pain of the neurodivergent community in navigating a world which does not accommodate their sensitivities. ‘Sensitivity’, at sensory and emotional levels and to various stimuli, is one of the main nodes that connect such different variations. Interestingly, (hyper)sensitivity has as well been a popular characterization tool for the creation of more-than-human characters in works of speculative fiction that address the climate crisis. A notable example, and the focus of this paper, is Lauren Olamina, the main character in Octavia E. Butler’s celebrated novel, Parable of the Sower: a character who can feel the pain of the others, a trait which is shared by many neurodivergent people in their experiences of over-empathizing. In this paper, I will look at the different materializations of this character in the novel as well its adaptations, particularly its comics adaptation by Damian Duffy and John Jennings (2020), with a neurodivergent lens, to put in dialogue the two narratives of climatic apocalypse and neurodiversity. Doing so, I vouch for foregrounding ‘sensitivity’ in the discourses around climate justice and I argue that acknowledging the knowledge and perception of neurodivergent communities can lead to a better understanding of new forms of life and existing futures.