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Vishnu KK Nair, PhD is trained as a speech and language therapist and a critical scholar of communication disability. Currently, he is a lecturer in the school of psychology and clinical language sciences at 9 1��Ѱ��� of Reading. His research focuses on understanding communication disability utilising critical, decolonial and global southern epistemologies.

For the video recording of this presentation, please see the online symposia page.

In this paper, I focus on Global South and Neurodiversity and how these two intersections demonstrate opposing polarities of epistemological marginalisation and epistemological domination. I utilise this binary not in a reductive sense, but to highlight the invisibilisation of multi-conceptualisations beyond the ones originating from the North relating to Neurodiversity. Neurodiversity, as a theory and a movement had enormous impact in challenging the domination of brain, cognitive and medical based understanding of disabilities such as Autism or ADHD. Chapman (2023) laid out a Marxist perspective of Neurodiversity that clearly rejects the biological determinism underlying the construction of typical and atypical based on Galtonian ideologies. Whilst this theoretical evolution is commendable, the most popular version of neurodiversity utilised in Global North, particularly in countries such as the UK and the US are rooted within a liberal paradigm. This version of  neurodiversity has been depoliticised and commodified from its original onto-epistemological commitments towards emancipation and social justice.

A reconceptualised neurodiversity implemented across multiple liberal institutions such as university, organisations, charities, NGOs or academic publishing have erased the intersectional experience of racialised other living in the Global North (e.g., Onaiwu, 2020). This erasure is significant because, within these discourses, neurodiversity becomes a commodity for knowledge production or used within liberal institutions for upholding performative diversity measures. Such an erasure will also result in othering of individuals i.e., the White majority can be labelled as neurodivergent whereas the racialised other becomes “naughty”, “problematic” or “erratic” etc. This raises a set of questions, for example, who gets to have access requirement met for being neurodivergent in an educational setting? Who are the ones that are not imagined within this label or classification? It is not so much that the label itself is the site of contention but these questions are directly related to who is creating a particular construction in a given location. In my current research, I address this issue through pointing out the erasure of racialised other within a neurodiversity paradigm and think beyond the White, middle class, liberal discourses of neurodiversity. Importantly, I examine the intersectional impact of such erasure in a racialised neurodivergent child.

Whilst these issues offer a critique of liberal neurodiversity lens, I further unsettle the most radical forms of neurodiversity that challenges capitalism and aims to achieve a neurodivergent liberation. I argue that new scholarship emerging in this area is not fully engaging with other related fields of critical disability studies (e.g., Annamma et al. 2013; Goodley, 2012). In a recent paper, along with colleagues from the UK and the US, I pointed out that it is imperative for neurodiversity to engage with a number of different critical fields, particularly disability critical race theory to create an expansive understanding of neurodivergent oppression (Nair et al. 2024). This is particularly important in the context of increased incarnation rates of racialised other in the US or the UK. Critically, I highlighted the overrepresentation of whiteness in neurodiversity scholarship which is symptomatic of epistemological domination, a sign of totalising tendencies of colonial science that invisibles othered experiences. This epistemological domination is also predicated upon undermining Global Southern epistemologies that have parallels with neurodiversity, however, have a deeper understanding of disability. Whilst I do not aim to delineate a list of diverse southern epistemologies, I highlight that sensemaking of divergence existed in all cultures and there is a common thread of ethical and moral responsibilities, centering of distributional and relational practice towards neurodivergent individuals that is shared between diverse southern knowledge systems (Canagarajah, 2023). Wide range of situated knowledge practices have predated the Global Northern conceptualisation of Neurodiversity, yet the latter has often been projected as a singular theory or a movement originated in the 1990’s from the Global North capable of emancipation. This totalising tendency is problematic not just because of its epistemological erasure, but in doing so, it invisibilises the neurodivergent individuals living in Southern locations.

The invisibilisation also results in exporting of a liberal neurodiversity framework to Global South under the assumption of a “theoretical lack” in those geographies. This raises a new set of tensions that an adapted and borrowed Northern liberal framework is not equipped to engage with, for example in the context of India where there are intersectional inequities due to rise in Hindu nationalism and Islamophobia, institutionalised brahmanical patriarchy and the convergence of caste and capitalism. Although the neurodiversity framework of the North may make minor liberal advancements, it may not have any emancipatory potential in these societies given the complex realities. I, therefore, call upon neurodiversity scholars to engage in this critical reflection and learn from other situated knowledges and practices of bodymind divergence and the intersectional impact of such differences in geographies beyond Global North.

References
Annamma, S. A., Connor, D., & Ferri, B. (2013). Dis/ability critical race studies
(DisCrit): Theorizing at the intersections of race and dis/ability. Race ethnic-ity and education, 16(1), 1-31.

Canagarajah, S. (2023). A decolonial crip linguistics. Applied Linguistics, 44(1), 1-21.


Chapman R. (2023). Empire of normality: Neurodiversity and capitalism. Pluto
Press.

Goodley, D (2012). “Dis/entangling Critical Disability Studies.” Disability & Society
27 (6): 631–44.

Giwa Onaiwu, M. (2020). I, too, sing neurodiversity. Ought: The Journal of Autistic
Culture, 2(1), 10. Doi: 10.9707/2833-1508.1048

Nair, V. K., Farah, W., & Boveda, M. (2024). Is neurodiversity a Global Northern
White paradigm?. Autism,