Autistic Rhizome
@Autistic Realms
A growing and evolving network of Autistic communities with no hierarchy or dependence on anothers existence.
Each person forms an integral part and is connected by a flow of energy that not only runs through and between individuals and communities but enables new connections to form. It is a place of safety, support and deep understanding.
The Autistic rhizome creates new energy through the sharing and evolution of ideas which permeates and ripples through into wider society.
Rhizome: as conceptualised in the work of Deleuze and Guatarri. A network with no single point of origin. No part of the network depends upon the existence of another. I have introduced the idea of this in the context of community here.
Neuro-anarchy and the rise of the Autistic Rhizome – DGH Neurodivergent Consultancy
On discord, there is a growing network of communities. I have lovingly dubbed this collective The Autistic Rhizome. They are an interconnected network of knowledge exchange, and mutual aid and support that have displaced the hierarchical nature of advocate/follower relationships.
We are equal in these spaces.
This doesn’t mean that all knowledge shared is useful in advancing the neurodiversity movement. Like any knowledge, some is good, some is bad, most is somewhere in the middle.
This growing network consists of communities that do not depend on each other to exist, but are still enriched by their interconnection. There is no starting or end point. There is no advancing through communities based on levels of knowledge. They just simply exist, and people come and go as they please.
Neuro-anarchy and the rise of the Autistic Rhizome – DGH Neurodivergent Consultancy
In order to explore the nature of our ever growing and developing Autistic culture, we need to be looking to the Autistic rhizome, detached from a non-existent central point, exploring new theory, and building on what exists. We need to surprise the world with each new thought, not repackage the same thought over and over.
Autistic Culture and the Advent of Decentralised Communities – Stimpunks Foundation
Deleuze and Guattari described this kind of thinking as ‘Rhyzomatic.’
A rhyzome isn’t like a tree, it doesn’t have subordinate parts emerging from a core trunk. A rhizome is a root system of pure connections.
How the things connect is how they are defined. By the same logic, how they are disconnected is how they are defined.
Deleuze differed from the poststructuralists like Derrida and Foucault in that he was a Monist. All of it is connected, all of it is one, and the connections and lack of connections between the things, are what define them as things. This is an Ontology of Difference.
Spider-Verse, Identity Politics, Leftist Infighting, and the Oppression Olympics – YouTube
A punk bass line. With all the space for ingenuity and contributions.
Spider-Verse, Identity Politics, Leftist Infighting, and the Oppression Olympics – YouTube
Further reading,
