Imagining Neurodivergent Futures from the Belly of the Identity Machine: Neurodiversity,Biosociality,and Strategic Essentialism

Introduction

As folk theories of genetics have been integrated into the popular culture in North America, they have had a significant impact on our understandings of identity. This has had particular implications for Disability Studies, as advocacy groups coalesce around new “biosocial” ¹ identities that are perceived to have a biological, often genetic, basis. ² This has invigorated a renegotiation of the divide between the essentialist, medical model of disability and the constructivist, social model.^3,4 Although the social model has been influential in shifting the onus from disabled people to adapt to an inaccessible and ableist society, to society at large to create spaces that are more accessible, it has also sometimes had the effect of downplaying functional differences, particularly those that may be linked to biology.^3,4 Biosocial identity models incorporate some medical understandings of impairment within a broader social context.^3,5

Activists within the Neurodiversity and Autistic Rights Movements have appropriated genetic and neurological language in their constructions of Autistic identities.^3,4 Some academics have criticized this move, on the grounds that this Neurodiversity paradigm “accepts uncritically the idea that there are essential and knowable biological differences that construct our social identities and behaviors.” ⁶ I argue that the biosocial identity adopted by many Neurodiversity advocates is not an uncritical reiteration of medical model essentialism, but rather a strategically adopted response to current realities. Further, this response contains the seeds of a critique of the medicalized understanding of autism. ⁷

A concept that I have found useful in thinking through these dynamics is that of strategic essentialism. In post-colonial theory, strategic essentialism refers to the intentional, and often temporary, appropriation of select aspects of essentialist narratives by a marginalized group for political purposes.^8–13 Spivak is credited with coining the term.^13–15 In her original usage, strategic essentialism is best understood as a political strategy, and not as a premise of an overarching theory. The value of strategic essentialism is as a tool for marginalized groups to reclaim the narratives told about them, ultimately as a first step toward dismantling them. Typically, these strategies are undertaken for the purpose of creating a political identity around which members of the group can rally.^8–13

Strategic essentialism has seen varied application in post-colonial studies, feminism, indigenous studies, and other fields.^8–14 Of particular interest to this article are the ways in which strategic essentialism has been taken up within Indigenous rights discourses,^9,14 as I feel that several productive parallels can be drawn between the Indigenous Rights Movement and the Neurodiversity Movement.

Understanding how other movements have engaged with these strategies may shed light on both their usefulness and their pitfalls. In looking beyond our individual struggles as Neurodiversity advocates, we can see the ways they are deeply intertwined with other structural forces, and we may begin to move beyond the narrow field of strategic essentialism, to challenge the underlying ideologies that perpetuate ableist discrimination.^7,15

Autism, Disability, and Disorder

The uneven way in which theory generated within the Neurodiversity Movement has made its way into the academic sphere has meant that scholars have not always engaged fully with arguments forwarded by Autistic activists. ¹⁶ The first point of misunderstanding between Neurodiversity advocates and outside academics seems to be the perception that Neurodiversity advocates do not view Autism as a disability. ¹⁷ It is my experience that the ways in which Autism is discussed by Neurodiversity advocates are more nuanced than has been portrayed.^5,18–20 The idea that autism should be accepted as part of human diversity, and the argument that focus should be on accommodation for Autistic people is not a denial of autism's disability status.^5,21

Hughes ²¹ presents a more refined iteration of the argument that the Neurodiversity paradigm is a rejection of Autism's status as a disability. He positions what he refers to as the “non disorder claim” as central to the Neurodiversity paradigm. In doing so, he makes the important distinction that what he refers to as the non-disorder claim is not equivalent to claiming that autism is not a disability, acknowledging that Neurodiversity advocates are building on the social model of disability.

He asserts that advocates claim that autistic traits are not intrinsically harmful, and points to traits such as severe sensory processing issues and self-harm arising from communication difficulties, as counterexamples of harmful traits. ²¹ Although I agree with many of the points he makes, I find that Hughes' analysis is missing, or at least de-emphasizing, important aspects of the arguments being put forward by many Neurodiversity advocates, particularly the perspectives of advocates who are multiply marginalized. Several Neurodiversity advocates have offered important critiques of the social model, building on the work of earlier Disability studies scholars and proposing refinements and new directions. In part, this has been in response to the limitations of a strict interpretation of the social model such as the one Hughes employs.^5,19,21–23

Although the Neurodiversity paradigm ²⁴ developed out of the Autistic Rights Movement, it was quickly expanded to include other neurocognitive differences. The term neurodivergent, coined by Asasumasu, developed because multiply divergent activists were seeking language to discuss similarities in their experiences that were not limited to autism. The term neuroqueer was similarly developed to create spaces for intersectional discussion and praxis.^24–28 The Neurodiversity paradigm represents a concerted effort to seek solidarity with others whose experiences of discrimination on the basis of neuro-cognitive differences share common ground with anti-Autistic discrimination.^27–30

The overall point Hughes is making is a useful one. Although I understand the impulse that some Autistic activists have to separate Autistic experience from the negative stigma of impairment, dividing neurodiversity into types deemed desirable and undesirable is impeded by the fuzzy boundaries of diagnoses such as Autism. ²¹ More importantly, insisting on the separation does little to unsettle the underlying assumption that there is an idealized “normal” way of functioning against which disabled people are measured.^30,31 However, Hughes' framing reinforces a key assumption of the medical model that Neurodiversity advocates have been attempting to disrupt.^8,32–36 Hughes identifies social and communication difficulties as “core autistic traits,” ²¹ located as individual deficits within individual disabled bodies.

The counterargument to this assumption can be seen in work by proponents of the Neurodiversity paradigm, which draws attention not only to deficits that “typically developing” individuals experience in their interactions with Autistic people, but also to the influence of stigma and maltreatment in producing impairment.^6,32–36 This need not be a complete rejection of a biological basis for autism, much less a disavowal of impairments directly related to autism, but it does call for a view of autism that incorporates an understanding of social contexts, even when assessing impairments that may involve some biological basis and are seen as resulting from “core autistic traits.” Autism is not a meaningful category in an “objective,” biological sense, but it is meaningful in how it impacts, and is informed by, the embodied experiences of those categorized as Autistic. In that regard, autism is as slippery a category as race or indigeneity.^6,19

A claim that I propose is more relevant to the Neurodiversity Movement is Broderick's assertion that medical model constructions of “disorder” have tended to frame disorders such as autism as “cultural threats” ³⁷ resulting in stigma and discrimination against those whose behavioral and neuro-cognitive functioning deviates from an idealized norm.^37,38 Both Broderick and McGuire illustrate ways in which Autism is portrayed as threatening through media. This threat is portrayed as extending beyond the individual or family level, but extending to the cultural level through the use of militaristic metaphors such as “the War on Autism” and “the Autism epidemic.”^37,38 Autism is presented through these metaphors as not only a threat to individual people and families, but as undermining the normative values of the dominant culture.^31,37–39

This is where the analogies to race or sexuality forwarded by Walker ²⁴ and other Neurodiversity advocates^6,19,30 become relevant. For many of us this is not an argument that “the disadvantage associated with impairments is wholly a result of social conditions” as Hughes ²¹ interprets it. It is an argument that racism, sexual discrimination, and other forms of oppression share many of the same ideological underpinnings as the forms of ableism which the Neurodiversity movement aims to address.^28–30,36

It is here where Autistic activists find ourselves in a double bind when we attempt to claim Autistic identity. There is no single aetiology, and no one-size fits all “solution” to impairments associated with autism.^21,40 Attempting to address autism as a whole in a medical model context leads to interventions that attempt to “normalize” autistic traits regardless of whether they are inherently harmful, ¹⁹ rather than addressing the individual needs of Autistic people. ⁴¹ This results in a decreased tolerance for neurological differences and diverts attention away from supports for specific impairments in favor of attempts to “cure” autism. ³⁷ Several authors have pointed out the eugenic undertones inherent in these attempts.^28,37,38,41 At the same time there is power in the ability to name a shared experience. Autistic people may have vastly varied lived realities when it comes to the ways in which we experience impairment, but we have a shared experience in being labeled “disordered” within the context of an ableist society. ⁶

Division into Functioning Labels

A second criticism of the Neurodiveristity Movement stems from the perception that it is “dominated by people diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome and other forms of high functioning autism.” ⁴² Jaarsma and Welin take this assertion further, arguing that “The broad version of the neurodiversity claim, covering low-functioning as well as high-functioning autism, is problematic. Only a narrow conception of neurodiversity, referring exclusively to high-functioning autists, is reasonable.” ¹⁷ In making this argument, scholars like Jaarsma and Welin rely on the very categorizations that have been rejected by Autistic activists as being too essentializing.^43–50

Neurodiverstiy activists have discussed the flaws inherent in labeling people “high functioning” and “low functioning” at length elsewhere.^6,7,43–50 Several authors have written on the ways in which perceptions of impairment within autism are entangled with assumptions about race and gender which are deeply rooted in colonialism and patriarchy.^7,51–54 Jack ⁵⁴ deconstructs Simon Baron-Cohen's “Extreme Male Brain”^54–56 theory noting the gender bias in Baron-Cohen's tests which “naturalize historically and culturally specific definitions of technology itself, which tend to exclude technologies associated with women, non-Whites, and non-Europeans.” ⁵⁴ DeHooge ⁷ makes similar observations, linking biases inherent in the normalization of white masculinity to diagnostic disparities between White cis-male Autistics who are disproportionately represented among so called “high functioning” Autistics and Black Indigenous people of color (BIPOC), and female autistics who are under-represented.^7,53,57–63

Some of these disparities may be accounted for by factors like the additional social pressures placed on marginalized Autistic people which result in increased “masking,” the lack of access to specialized diagnosis in under-resourced communities, and other social and historical factors.^7,57–63 However there is also evidence that bias from assessors is a factor in creating these diagnostic disparities. ⁶³ For instance it has been repeatedly demonstrated that standardized intelligence testing can be problematic when applied to indigenous populations, particularly when assessing children from remote communities, due to linguistic differences and cultural differences in learning style.^59–62 Inman also points to the role of racial stereotyping in the under-representation of indigenous children in Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) diagnosis and their over-representation in diagnoses of Fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD). ⁵³

This is not to say that functioning labels are irrelevant to Autistic experience. They have very real impacts on how those labeled are treated. There are also real differences in experience of levels of impairment among Autistic people.^7,47,48,64 What is apparent is that the ways in which diagnostic labels are constructed and applied are not politically neutral.^7,53,54 The arguments put forward by Jack, ⁵⁴ DeHooge, ⁹ and others,^33,53 build on the work of scholars aligned with Disability Rights Movements, Anti-Racism Movements, and the Mad Pride Movement, about the socially constructed nature of intelligence, and the role of race, and white supremacy in the diagnostic process.^{53,59,65–69} In light of these discussions it becomes clear that “high-functioning” and “low-functioning,” even when defined as a distinction between “high” and “low” IQ, are slippery categories. To ignore the constructed nature of these categories is to ignore the ways in which they are raced and gendered, and to ignore their historical roots in eugenic thought.^33,59,70

In support of their assumption that the Neurodiversity movement represents only “high functioning” Autistic people, Ortega and Choudhury ⁷¹ quote the satirical website for the Institute for the Study of the Neurologically Typical. “I and my experience of life is not inferior, and may be superior, to the NT experience of life.” ⁷² Site founder, Laura A. Tisoncik would later write

Leaving aside the blatant parody of the original context, what is being missed here is that views of (“high functioning”) Autistic superiority are not representative of all, or even most, activists engaged with the Neurodiversity and Autistic Rights movements. Rather they represent a particular philosophical perspective advanced by some Autistic people both within the Neurodiversity Movement and often opposed to it. This standpoint has come to be known in Autistic circles as “Aspie Supremacy.”^7,74,75 As argued by DeHooge, “The notion of Aspie whiteness, along with the history of utilitarian arguments for Aspie survival, indicate a kinship between Aspie supremacy and Social Darwinism.” ⁷

When non-autistic academics frame the Neurodiversity movement as the purview of “high functioning” Autistics, non-autistic scholars not only “[flatten] the spectrum in “autism spectrum disorder” to a linear construct used to rank autistic individuals by their economic (un)worthiness,” ⁹ they ignore the vital contributions made to the movement by non-speaking Autistic people, and those with higher support needs.^{43,46,47,64,73} Speaking as an Autistic activist, the choice by activists to embrace the label of Autistic as a politicized identity is not an attempt to deny the range of disability within the Autistic community, rather it is a strategic choice to claim solidarity with those most impacted by the reductionist narrative of the medical model. When academics like Ortega and Choudhury, ⁷¹ and Jaarsma and Welin ¹⁷ use functioning labels in their critiques of the Neurodiversity paradigm they not only flatten the true diversity of experiences within the Autistic community, they also ignore the ways in which the very conception of functioning labels is deeply entwined with ableism, white supremacy, and misogyny.^7,33,54

The Neurodiversity Movement and Identity Politics

It is not a given that movement's rejection of functioning labels will automatically result in an undermining of the excesses of medical model essentialism. Some authors have been critical of the Neurodiversity Movement's adoption of strategic essentialism and identity politics precisely because of its dependence on a neoliberal construction of identity.^15,40,76,77

Brown describes neoliberalism as a “peculiar form of reason that configures all aspects of existence in economic terms.” ⁷⁸ The ideology of neoliberalism shapes people's thinking and relationships to better fit within it's economic paradigm.^78,79 This impacts the ways in which people in neoliberal societies understand identity. Identities become viewed primarily as things which individuals possess, rather than as descriptions of social relationships that people are involved in Refs.^78–80 Harris has argued, for instance that Whiteness functions in ways similar to property. ⁸⁰ An effect of viewing identities as things that people possess rather than complex sets of relationships can be to obscure their relational character. They become something that one either possess or does not possess which can create an undue focus on narratives of authenticity and us/them antagonism.^{15,40,76–82}

In her discussion of what she terms the global “identity machine,” which she argues produces not only identities “but also the very ontology of identity that underlies liberal and neoliberal democracy,” Leve ⁸¹ points to the effectiveness of neoliberal discourses in co-opting resistance. She calls on anthropologists not to reject identity claims, but instead to “examine where that ontology is being appealed to and where it is not and, most of all, to look for emergent types of creativity.” ⁸¹ Mollow ¹⁵ and Runswick-Cole, ⁴⁰ also examine the stifling impact of neoliberal governmentality on the imaginative space that is needed for resistance. In their view, identity politics have allowed activists to secure much needed resources but will not be enough to challenge the underlying structures which create inequalities.^15,40,77

These critiques mirror discussions occurring within the Neurodiversity movement. Autistic BIPOC people, Autistic LGBTQ+ people and others within the Neurodiversity movement have been calling for inter-movement solidarity, and a broadening of the Neurodiversity movement to include a more interdependent and relational view of disability identity in an effort to move the Neurodiversity movement beyond the confines of neoliberal constructions of identity.^{27,29,30,44,83,84} In We Autistics, We Villages, We Humanoids, Meunier ⁸⁴ writes:

Much more is revealed in the narrative of resistance by autistic people than can be contained by any one movement. In the disability rights movement, we talk about disability as constructed: that we are disabled by a world that was not built for us. But the reality is that the industrialized world we have come to accept as “normal” was not built to sustain life at all, only to consume it. Neurodiversity is part of a new scope of sight that needs to reach even deeper than social models of disability which retain the white colonial privilege of that delusion. ⁸⁴

Several Neurodiversity advocates have written about neurodiversity within the context of biodiversity.^6,22,84–86 In the above quotation, Meunier expands on these claims calling on readers to consider neurodiverisity not only in relation to biological diversity, but also in relation to anti-colonial struggle. ⁸⁴ Their framing of neurodiversity avoids the traps “that identity politics can impede coalition-building with other political minorities” ¹⁵ and of the “danger that a politics of neurodiversity will fail to pay attention to the other forms of marginalization that underpin exclusionary and oppressive practices, including heterosexism/sexism, racism, poverty and imperial- ism, as well as the intersections between them” ⁴⁰ raised by Mollow ¹⁵ and Runswick-Cole. ⁴⁰ By framing neurodiversity within an ecological model, and making explicit connections between the Neurodiversity movement and other social justice movements, Neurodiveristity advocates like Meunier, ⁸⁴ and Chapman ²² are laying the groundwork for the movement to transcend its current entanglement with the “identity machine.” ⁸¹

The diversity in perspectives in Neurodiversity activism is why authors such as Milton have been critical of non-Autistic activists who make claims about the Neurodiversity Movement without sufficient “interactional expertise.” ⁶ I would extend Milton's argument further, by pointing out that the voices of Autistic people who experience multiple intersections of marginalization may not be so easy to find by those outside our communities. Understanding the complexity of the Neurodiversity Movement takes an investment of time, and the humility to build respectful relationships with activists from diverse backgrounds. A review of the writings of activists with the largest platforms, which may emphasize work written for a non-Autistic audience, and may miss important contributions by BIPOC Autistic activists, will provide only an incomplete picture of the discourse occurring within the movement. ⁴⁸

Lessons from the Indigenous Rights Movement and the Use of Strategic Essentialism

Much can be gained by paying attention to how these strategies have played out in more established movements, the social contexts that produced them, and the points of intersection between the power structures of ableism, racism, and colonialism. This is not just because the emerging Neurodiversity and Autistic Rights movements stand to benefit from the hard-won wisdom gleaned by other movements (why after all re-invent the proverbial wheel) but also because racism, eugenics and ableism have a long history of co-construction. They draw on similar justifications, creating regimes of truth ⁸⁷ which serve to reinforce each other.^{7,31,51,70,88–90} This history continues to resonate in the lives of all Autistic people, ⁷ but it is felt most strongly by those who experience multiple intersections of marginalization. ⁴⁹

In their consideration as to whether or not Autistic people can be seen as having a “culture,” Jaarsma and Welin ¹⁷ state that:

The Inuit in Canada, Native Americans in the USA, and Sami population in the Scandinavia are examples of groups that claim special rights. In their case this is based on a common origin and a shared history. This is not the case for autistic people, nor do they have a homeland of their own. The claims from the autistic culture are similar to the Deaf culture, which also live dispersed among the majority. But how to determine whether somebody is a member of the autistic culture? Is it enough with self identification as autistic or do we need some “objective” way to characterize them? In the case of Sami people or Inuit there are “objective” ways; each member shares a common history and background. ¹⁷

In it's reliance on “authenticity” and “objective” categorization, this framing plays to the “identity machine” described by Leve, ⁸¹ and runs counter to key points raised by Indigenous activists.^{9,14,82,91,92} Identity categories, even those as taken for granted as “ethnicity,” and “culture” are always constructed, always contested and therefore, fluid. Indigeneity in North America has never been reducible to “objective” measures, and has never been a simple matter of shared history.^91,92 Many Indigenous academics and activists have pushed back against narratives of “authenticity,” but in doing so they find themselves in a double bind. The legal framework for the protection of Indigenous rights, such as it is, in Canada is based on a construction of indigeneity that is predicated on a myth of pre-contact “authenticity.”^{9,10,14,82,91,92} Activists and academics who wish to further relational and fluid concepts of identity must walk a tight rope between re-inscribing essentialist colonial narratives and undermining struggles for the acknowledgement of their communities' legal rights.^14,81

The construction of a pan-Indigenous identity, which is implicit in Jaarsma and Welin's use of the term Native Americans, ¹⁷ has been a direct result of policies of assimilation and, more saliently, an attempt to convert indigenous people to European styles of land ownership. In Canada this regulation of indigenous identity was codified at the national level in the The Gradual Enfranchisement Act of 1869, ⁹⁴ and The Indian Act.^{14,82,88,92,93} One of the aims of this legislation has been to legally restrict the number of people considered to be indigenous by denying legal recognition to the decedents of indigenous women who married non-status men. Indigenous people of mixed ancestry are constructed as not “native enough” to qualify for the protection of their aboriginal rights.^{14,82,91,92,95}

In her discussion of Indigenous identities, and surrounding narratives of authenticity, Lawrence ¹⁴ cautions that: “it is important to emphasize that status Indians are not being simply “brainwashed” by the logic of the Indian Act into accepting these colonial categories as natural” but rather that “no risk-free space exists in which to explore Native identity.” Instead “the blurring and shifting of cultural boundaries that can occur in white-dominated contexts when Nativeness is theorized not as an authentic essence but as something negotiated and continuously evolving can have dangerous repercussions for Native people in terms of asserting Aboriginal rights.” ¹⁴ The embrace of strategic essentialism by Indigenous activists in claiming indigeneity is made necessary by the power relationships they find themselves in, even if that embrace risks playing into colonial narratives that have their origins in presumed biological, racial difference.^{9,10,14,81,92}

Bell explores some of tensions arising from the adoption of strategic essentialism in Strategic Essentialism, Indigenous Agency and Difference. ⁹ She points out Spivak's^12,13 original conception of strategic essentialism as a temporary strategy aimed at deconstruction. She argues that there have been some sticking points when applying this understanding of strategic essentialism to indigenous movements.

The issue with this for many indigenous activists is how to “maintain the difference of indigeneity” in the context of the “colonial project of assimilation,” while deconstructing colonial demands for authenticity. ⁹ The tension between a purely strategic use of an identity categorization, and the need to protect space in which to build community in resistance to assimilation also permeates debates around the Neurodiversity movement. It is, I believe, the crux of the miscommunication between non-Autistic activists who see the Neurodiversity movement as re-inscribing essentialist discourses and Neurodiversity advocates who employ references to biological differences in their claims to Autistic identity. Milton hits on this in a debate with Sami Timimi which took place before an initial meeting of the Rethinking Autism Network. In this debate Milton and Timimi discussed whether Autism has an essential nature. ⁶ Much like Indigenous activists, Neurodiversity activists find ourselves walking a tightrope between essentialism and illegibility.

Ableism and Racism as Co-constitutive Regimes of Truth

When non-Autistic authors interpret Autistic people's claims as a simple one to one equation between Neurodiversity and race^17,21 they de-emphasize the legitimate points of connection which can be drawn between these movements. It is true that autism cannot be equated to race. Doing so erases the experience of BIPOC people of colour, and the ways in which Autism has been used to reinforce constructions of whiteness.^{11,16,66,80,81} For example Douglas et al., ⁹⁶ and Gibson and Douglas, ⁹⁷ argue that autism's construction in the 1940's as a classification primarily assigned to white bourgeois males, acted to give white bourgeois families distance from classifications that were deemed “un-improvable” such as feeblemindedness which had already taken on associations with poverty and with radicalized others.^96–98 However, racism and ableism should not be simplistically treated as separate, additive experiences of oppression. ⁹⁹

In Revenge of the Windigo: The Construction of the Mind and Mental Health of North American Aboriginal Peoples, Waldram ¹⁰⁰ traces the co-construction of racism and ableism. Waldram cites Freud's 1913 book, Totem and Taboo, ¹⁰¹ as influential in incorporating prevalent societal preconceptions about the relationship between “primitive” peoples, children, and neurodivergent Westerners into the emerging scientific discourses. ¹⁰⁰

I am particularly struck by the language used by early psychoanalytical anthropologists to describe Indigenous people, and its similarity to descriptions of Autistic people. Waldram describes the attempts by both anthropologists and psychologists to construct models of “aboriginal personality,” and the ways in which these attempts led to the perception of Indigenous people as inherently pathological. ¹⁰⁰ He quotes from The work of A. Irving Hallowell, a psychological anthropologist.^102,103

Hallowell described the Anishinaabe as “so dominated by fantasies that his relations with all objects of the outside world-people and things- tends to be distorted,” and “unable to achieve a free and easy, or even satisfactory, rapport with others.” ¹⁰² There is even discussion of Anishinaabe people “regressing to a childlike state.” ¹⁰³ These narratives were picked up by latter psychologists. Their influence can still be seen in more recent literature addressing the development of culturally competent health care. In a list of “a set of the most commonly declared, universal Aboriginal behaviors, values, and ethics” which was drawn from works published between 1961 and 2000, lack of eye contact appears as the first entry. Reticence/shyness appears third on the list. ¹⁰⁰ By comparison, Lovaas described Autistic children as “severely disturbed. People seem to be no more than objects to them. They show no signs of warmth toward others… Sometimes parents think the child is visually impaired because they walk into objects as though they don't see them and because they don't look into your eyes.” ¹⁰⁴

Pyne cites Ivar Lovaas's use of the term “primitive” in reference to Autistic children in some of his other writings as an example of this entanglement with colonialism. ⁹⁷ Others too, have noted the co-constructive nature of the discourses of colonialism and ableism.^{67,89,90,97,105} In Child As Metaphor: Colonialism, Psy-Governance, and Epistemicide Mills and LeFrançois ¹⁰⁵ point to the shared lineages of these discourses to Western European notions of children as “irrational, incompetent, unintelligent, animistic, in need of (parental) guidance, (economically) unproductive, and epistemically void.” ¹⁰⁵ This world view, they argue, hinges on a belief in a unilinear model development, whether occurring at an individual or community level. ¹⁰⁵

Colonial assimilationist policies find their justification in such unilinear models of development in which European and explicitly Christian cultures are assumed to be the apex of human development and therefore inherently superior. Such policies rely on the perceived cultural, and mental inferiority of indigenous people.^{9,14,31,33,59,61,67,69} Thus they are historically linked not only to the construction of racial identities, but to the construction of notions of intelligence and disability as well.^88,105

The eugenics movement of the late ninetieth and early twentieth centuries is one example of this entanglement between racism, ableism, and infantilization in action. Driven by fears of an increasing prevalence of people deemed “unfit,” the medical establishment in Canada pushed for sterilization efforts to reduce the financial burden perceived to be posed by groups deemed socially undesirable.^{8,39,59,67,88–90,95} These efforts were officially sanctioned by Sexual Sterilization Acts in Alberta from 1928 to 1972, ¹⁰⁶ and in British Colombia from 1933 to 1973. ¹⁰⁷ Other Canadian provinces did not have formal legislation, but coerced sterilization was tacitly approved of,^89,90 and in some instances has continued to the present day.^108–110 These policies disproportionately targeted indigenous people and have been described as part of Canada's larger campaign of genocide against indigenous people.^88–90

The rhetoric which justified these policies was based in a belief that the state had a moral obligation to intervene in the best interests of those labeled “mental defectives.”^89,90,105 However writings of the time also make it clear that financial concerns, including the desire to reduce the Crown's obligations to pay treaty annuities, and the desire to reduce the numbers of people institutionalized, were also a significant motivating factor.^49,90,91 Authors including Broderick ³⁷ and McGuire ³⁸ have illustrated how similar rhetoric continues to permeate public discourse around Autism, with fears being stoked about an “epidemic” of increasing numbers of Autistic children being identified.^37,38 Chapman ⁴⁹ points to the ongoing entanglement of these narratives into the present day.

While authors like Hughes ²¹ and Lee ⁷⁷ are right in pointing out that analogies between ableism and racism made by some neurodiversity advocates have been overly simplistic, other advocates have been calling attention to the deep entanglement of ableism and other forms of oppression, and have been persistent and nuanced in their calls for inter-movement solidarity.^{7,28–30,39,42,75,83,84} In hir blog Ballastexistenz, Baggs ³⁰ wrote on the importance of addressing the underlying ableism that underpins scientific racism. Sie argues that a failure to do so leaves the door open for arguments that some racial group of people is inherently less intelligent than another to return dressed up in new clothes. Hir analysis of the interrelationships between ableism and other forms of oppression echo other critiques of intersectionality, or at least the ways in which intersectionality has come to be applied, particularly the metaphor's inability to fully capture different levels of scale and the tendency of some applications of it to present all forms of subordination as parallel.^30,99,111

Perhaps the most disruptive aspect of the Neurodiversity movement is its challenge to the concept of deviance. Neurodiversity activist Narby ³⁹ writes that they “want to see the concept of ‘neurodiversity’ used to dismantle the very system of normality versus deviance. My autistic politics compel me to imagine a world where categories like ‘autistic’ and ‘neurotypical’ don't need to exist.” ³⁹

Conceptualizing Neurodiversity from Inside the Identity Machine

Tackling questions of Autistic identity is not a straight forward project. In The Politics of Neurodiversity Baker ³ highlights the need for complexity in our approach to disability. This first and foremost requires a consciousness of the “distinction between beliefs, justification and policy goals.” ³ This echos Spivak's assertion that “strategically you can look at essentialisms, not as descriptions of the way things are, but as something that one must adopt to produce a critique of anything.” ¹³ The distinction between strategic adoption of essentialisms and “descriptions of the way things are” ¹³ needs to be kept in mind, both by outside scholars and by Neurodiversity advocates when discussing Neurodiversity claims.

Like Narby I too dream of a wold where “categories like ‘autistic’ and ‘neurotypical’ don't need to exist” ³⁹ but where instead there is “acceptance of different ways of being and thinking as valid parts of human existence,” ³⁹ but that world is not our present reality. There would be consequences to disbanding autism as an identity category, both in terms of access to services and supports, and in making differences in experience and behavior understandable to non-Autistics. ⁶ Outside of certain academic circles, a biological basis for Autism is assumed as a matter of course.

Medical diagnosis is often required in order for individuals to access sports and services. ⁶ In addition to this a purely constructivist view of Autism as a social construct fails to account for actual differences in our embodied experiences, some of which may have a biological basis.^6,22,64 Framing autism as a bio-social identity and engaging in discourses around autism as a biological difference, even at the risk of engaging in some level of essentialism, is a strategic necessity if we are to carve out space and remain “dans le vrai” or “within the true” ¹¹² of much of the current biologically focused discourses around autism, where the medical model adopted by autism professionals still holds sway.

Overly simplistic dismissals of the neurodiverisity paradigm and Autistic identity claims miss the very “emergent types of creativity” that Leve ⁸¹ exhorts anthropologists to be sensitive to. Many of these dismissals, particularly those which rely on essentialist constructions like functioning labels, serve to naturalize elements of the identity machine and erase critiques of essentialist identity which are emerging from within the Neurodiversity movement. Discourses of ableism have never been divorced from discourses of race.^{7,29–31,51–53,68–70} Knowledge of this history,^{89,90,100,105} and the ways it intersects with other forms of oppression,^54,97,98,105 is crucial in mapping a future free from the confines of the “identity machine.” ⁸¹ If we were to repudiate strategies of strategic essentialism without fully understanding the power dynamics behind them, we would miss an opportunity to find the places where the struggle of Neurodiversity activists is “bound up” ¹¹³ with other liberatory struggles.^{30,31,44,51,64,84,98,105} It is in those connections that we may find the seeds for transcending the “solipsistically narrow” ⁷¹ field of biosocial identity politics.