Neuroqueer Heresies: Notes on the Neurodiversity Paradigm, Autistic Empowerment, and Postnormal Possibilities

by Nick Walker

When cross-cultural interactions are navigated with in a cosmopolitan spirit, rather than with provincial prejudices or colonialist agendas of domination, it fosters mutually beneficial cultural exchanges and the creative hybridizations and synergies which have in myriad ways shaped music, art, language, literature, spirituality, philosophy, aesthetics, science, and technology throughout history and into the present day. How much more of what the philosopher Edgar Morin calls “the genius of diversity” might be awakened in a society that was not only truly cosmopolitan in its engagement with cultural diversity, but also truly neurocosmopolitan in its engagement with neurodiversity? What new confluences, creative hybridizations, and transformative synergies might emerge, on every scale in every realm of society and culture, and what might the results look like? We’re a long ways from a neurocosmopolitan society, but it’s a goal worth working toward and a vision that serves to guide and inspire much of my work. Perhaps it will guide and inspire you as well. And while we work toward this perhaps distant goal, each one of us can cultivate the neurocosmopolitan spirit in our own minds and in our own lives, right here and right now.