Neurodivergent Spatialities: A Geographical Reading of Recent Empirical Work in Neurodiversity Studies

Abstract

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.