1 research outputs found
Neurodiversity, Networks, and Narratives: Exploring Intimacy and Expressive Freedom in the Time of Covidâ19
The Narratives of Neurodiversity Network (NNN) is a neurodivergent academic, creative, and educator collective that came together with allies during the Covidâ19 pandemic to create a network centred around emerging narratives about neurodiversity and exploring new ways of learning and socialising. The network focuses on exploring the roles of written, spoken, and visual narratives across cultural locations about neuroâatypical experiences in generating improved agency and selfâadvocacy for those who have been subject to pathologization through neuroânormativity and intersecting oppression. During the last year, widening access to digital platforms has provided a space to explore these issues outside of traditional academic spaces. We run a monthly âSalon,â our mixedâmedia âreading, listening, and watchingâ group, in an effort to find positive representation within contemporary culture. Discussions have moved beyond mimesis and into a consideration of how narrative and storyworlds can question the supposed naturalness of certain ways of being in and perceiving the world. This article interrogates the networkâs core principles of nonhierarchical coâproduction, including the roles of creativity, community, identity, and emancipatory research which were animated by the new technoâsocial context. We consider the cultural lives of neurodiversity in the West and beyond, including ethical and aesthetic dimensions. We share a faith in the power of storytelling to inform new social identities for neurodivergent people and to inform scientific understandings of atypical cognition. In exploring this, we speak through a porous firstâperson plural narrator, to unsettle the idea that there is a hegemonic âweâ speaking on behalf of all neurodivergent people