I originally conceived of neuroqueer as a verb: neuroqueering as the practice of queering (subverting, defying, disrupting, liberating oneself from) neuronormativity and heteronormativity simultaneously. It was an extension of the way queer is used as a verb in Queer Theory; I was expanding the Queer Theory conceptualization of queering to encompass the queering of neurocognitive norms as well as gender norms––and, in the process, I was examining how socially-imposed neuronormativity and socially-imposed heteronormativity were entwined with one another, and how the queering of either of those two forms of normativity entwined with and blended into the queering of the other one.

Dr. Nick Walker, Neuroqueer: An Introduction

Neuroqueer as a Noun

A neuroqueer individual is any individual whose identity, selfhood, gender performance, and/or neurocognitive style have in some way been shaped by their engagement in practices of neuroqueering, regardless of what gender, sexual orientation, or style of neurocognitive functioning they may have been born with.

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

Neuroqueer as a Verb

…intentionally liberating oneself from the culturally ingrained and enforced performance of neuronormativity can be thought of as neuroqueering.

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

So what does it mean to neuroqueer, as a verb?

What are the various practices that fall within the definition of neuroqueering?

1. Being both neurodivergent and queer, with some degree of conscious awareness and/or active exploration around how these two aspects of one’s being entwine and interact (or are, perhaps, mutually constitutive and inseparable).
2. Embodying and expressing one’s neurodivergence in ways that also queer one’s performance of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and/or other aspects of one’s identity.
3. Engaging in practices intended to undo and subvert one’s own cultural conditioning and one’s ingrained habits of neuronormative and heteronormative performance, with the aim of reclaiming one’s capacity to give more full expression to one’s uniquely weird potentials and inclinations.
4. Engaging in the queering of one’s own neurocognitive processes (and one’s outward embodiment and expression of those processes) by intentionally altering them in ways that create significant and lasting increase in one’s divergence from prevailing cultural standards of neuronormativity and heteronormativity.
5. Approaching, embodying, and/or experiencing one’s neurodivergence as a form of queerness (e.g., in ways that are inspired by, or similar to, the ways in which queerness is understood and approached in Queer Theory, Gender Studies, and/or queer activism).
6. Producing literature, art, scholarship, and/or other cultural artifacts that foreground neuroqueer experiences, perspectives, and voices.
7. Producing critical responses to literature and/or other cultural artifacts, focusing on intentional or unintentional characterizations of neuroqueerness and how those characterizations illuminate and/or are illuminated by actual neuroqueer lives and experiences.
8. Working to transform social and cultural environments in order to create spaces and communities – and ultimately a society – in which engagement in any or all of the above practices is permitted, accepted, supported, and encouraged.

Neuroqueer: An Introduction

My favorite articulation of Queer Theory’s transcendence of the limitations of essentialist identity politics is a single sentence penned in 1997 by queer theorist David M. Halperin. In his book Saint Foucault: Towards a Gay Hagiography, Halperin wrote:

“Queer,” in any case, does not designate a class of already objectified pathologies or perversions; rather, it describes a horizon of possibility whose precise extent and heterogeneous scope cannot in principle be delimited in advance.

This post-essentialist articulation of the meaning and potentials of queer also perfectly sums up my conception of the meaning and potentials of neuroqueer. Neuroqueer is not a mere synonym for neurodivergent, or for neurodivergent identity combined with queer identity. Neuroqueer is active subversion of both neuronormativity and heteronormativity. Neuroqueer is intentional noncompliance with the demands of normative performance. Neuroqueer is choosing to actively engage with one’s potentials for neurodivergence and queerness, and the intersections and synergies of those potentials. Neuroqueer is about recognizing the fundamentally entwined nature of cognition, gender, and embodiment, and also about treating cognition, gender, and embodiment as fluid and customizable, and as canvases for ongoing creative experimentation.

Neuroqueer transcends essentialist identity politics not only by treating identity as fluid and customizable, but also by being radically inclusive. Neuroqueering is something anyone can potentially do, and there are infinite possible ways to do it and infinite possible ways to be transformed by it. The term neuroqueer points to a horizon of creative possibility with which anyone can choose to engage.

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

Neuroqueer and Essentialism

The majority of thinkers within the neurodiversity movement and the emerging field of Neurodiversity Studies have thus far tended to view human neurodiversity through an essentialist lens in which each individual is seen as being neurotypical because they were born neurotypical, or neurodivergent because they were born neurodivergent (or because they became neurodivergent due to some event such as trauma or illness that significantly altered their neurocognitive functioning). This essentialist understanding of neurodiversity, which we might describe as neuroessentialism, has admittedly been useful in some respects. Much of the important work of the neurodiversity movement up to the present day has proceeded from the recognition that a great many people are indeed born neurodivergent—meaning that their bodyminds are predisposed to modes of functioning that are incompatible with neuronormative performance—and that attempting to force these people to comply with the standards of neuronormative performance is harmful, unethical, and oppressive. Without this understanding, a neurodiversity movement probably wouldn’t have come into existence.

A neuroessentialist lens, however, also tends to impose artificial limitations on our sense of possibility. Here, again, we find parallels and connections between the realm of gender diversity and the realm of neurodiversity. The gender essentialist mindset, which can admit no gender possibilities other than two allegedly innate and immutable “biological sexes,” is inimical to gender creativity and to the realization of the infinite range of gender possibilities. By the same token, an overly neuroessentialist mindset—a mindset which conceives of human neurodiversity as consisting of little more than an assortment of largely innate and immutable “neurotypes” or “types of brains”—is an obstacle to the realization of the infinite range of neurocognitive possibilities, and to the realization of our full potentials for intentional creative queering of our minds.

Walker, Nick. Neuroqueer Heresies: Notes on the Neurodiversity Paradigm, Autistic, and Postnormal Possibilities (p. 172-173). Autonomous Press.

I’m not saying that it’s not potentially useful for people to recognize themselves as autistic or dyslexic or whatever. When not pathologized or stigmatized, such categories can serve a variety of important purposes—including helping people to better understand themselves, to understand and communicate about their access needs and their experiences, and to connect with and work in solidarity with others who have similar neurocognitive tendencies and needs. What I’m saying here is that we shouldn’t allow our conception of neurodiversity and its potentials to be constrained by such categories, just as we shouldn’t allow our conceptions of gender and sexuality to be constrained by the binaristic categories of male and female, or gay and straight.

Public discourses on human diversity, including the discourses on gender, sexual orientation, and neurodiversity, occur almost entirely within the framework of identity politics—a framework which is fundamentally essentialist, since it involves sorting people into identity categories which tend to be presented as largely innate and immutable. Those who are accustomed to viewing queerness through this lens are often surprised to learn that the field of Queer Theory tends to reject essentialism and thus to depart radically from the premises of identity politics.

In conceptualizing gender as being constructed through ongoing socially instilled performances which can be subverted and altered (i.e., queered), Queer Theory frames identity as a fluid byproduct of activity: gender and sexuality are first and foremost things that one does, rather than things that one is, and queer is a verb first and an adjective second. In other words, one is queer not because one was born immutably queer on some sort of essential genetic level, but because one acts in ways which queer heteronormativity (e.g., going outside the boundaries of the binary gender category to which one was assigned at birth, or engaging in non-heteronormative sexual activity).

Walker, Nick. Neuroqueer Heresies: Notes on the Neurodiversity Paradigm, Autistic Empowerment, and Postnormal Possibilities (p. 173-174). Autonomous Press.

While neurodivergent is a category of identity, neuroqueer is first and foremost a verb. Neuroqueering is a practice, or, more accurately, a continually emergent and potentially infinite array of practices—modes of creatively subversive and transformative action in which anyone can choose to engage.

Of course, neuroqueer, like queer, can also function as an identity label. But while a person can be considered neurodivergent simply by virtue of having been born that way, what makes a person neuroqueer is their choice to engage in neuroqueering. One is neuroqueer not because one was born immutably neuroqueer, but because one acts in ways which queer neuronormativity (and remember that a core principle of Neuroqueer Theory is that neuronormativity and heteronormativity are fundamentally entwined with one another, and therefore any significant queering of neuronormativity is also inevitably a queering of heteronormativity).

Walker, Nick. Neuroqueer Heresies: Notes on the Neurodiversity Paradigm, Autistic Empowerment, and Postnormal Possibilities (p. 174-175). Autonomous Press.

Finally, within the neurodiversity movement, there are still remnants of the pathology paradigm that I think need to be overcome. For instance, some neurodiversity proponents still see neurotypes as natural kinds with timeless biological essences. I hope we can overcome this kind of biological essentialism since it is theoretically untenable and in my view contributes to a lot of needlessly toxic discourse. Relatedly, we also need to have more of a widespread acknowledgement that neurotype is, to some extent, fluid, and that even neurotypicals become neurodivergent if they live long enough. Working towards a more fluid and inclusive understanding of neurological identification will, I hope, not just be more liberating for neurodivergent individuals, but also help establish how the neurodiversity paradigm will be better for everyone. After all, even neurotypicals cannot live up to the ideal of normalcy. They have closer proximity to the ideal, sure. But since nobody is wholly normal, adherence to the ideal is, I think, harmful in other ways even for those who are temporarily enabled by it.

The Neurodiversity Paradigm in Psychiatry: Robert Chapman, PhD

Neuroqueer and Somatics, Embodiment, and Cognitive Liberty

Neuroqueering as somatic praxis has been central to my conception of neuroqueer from the start.

Walker, Nick. Neuroqueer Heresies: Notes on the Neurodiversity Paradigm, Autistic Empowerment, and Postnormal Possibilities (p. 165). Autonomous Press.

Q: How does your training in somatics (both as a therapeutic orientation and your aikido background) factor into your work in the Neurodiversity Movement?

I see cognitive liberty as a core value of the Neurodiversity Movement.

The term cognitive liberty was coined by Wrye Sententia and Richard Glen Boire, the founders of the Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics. Cognitive liberty as an ethical value boils down to the idea that individuals have the right to absolute sovereignty over their own brains and their own cognitive processes. Advocates of cognitive liberty often break this idea down into two fundamental guiding ethical principles (originally inspired by the two “commandments” offered by Timothy Leary in The Politics of Ecstasy):

1. Individuals have the right to not have their brains and cognitive processes tampered with non-consensually.
2. Individuals have the right to tamper with their own brains and cognitive processes, or to voluntarily have them tampered with, in any way they choose.

Those of us who are deeply involved in transformative somatic practices or in the field of Somatic Psychology understand that the psyche is somatically organized, which means that each individual’s distinctive neurocognitive processes are intimately entwined with that individual’s style of movement and embodiment. Changes in movement and embodiment create changes in cognition.

This means that to tamper with a person’s unique individual style of movement and embodiment (for instance, through the behaviorist techniques that are frequently used to make autistic children suppress the outward signs of autism) is to tamper with that person’s cognition, and thus to violate their cognitive liberty.

In other words, freedom of embodiment—that is, the freedom to indulge, adopt, and/or experiment with any styles or quirks of movement and embodiment, whether they come naturally to one or whether one chooses them—is an essential element of cognitive liberty, and thus an essential area of focus for the Neurodiversity Movement. The freedom to be autistic necessarily includes the freedom to give bodily expression to one’s neurodivergence.

Walker, Nick. Neuroqueer Heresies: Notes on the Neurodiversity Paradigm, Autistic Empowerment, and Postnormal Possibilities (pp. 142-143). Autonomous Press.

The freedom to be autistic necessarily includes the freedom to give bodily expression to one’s neurodivergence.

Walker, Nick. Neuroqueer Heresies: Notes on the Neurodiversity Paradigm, Autistic Empowerment, and Postnormal Possibilities (pp. 142-143). Autonomous Press.

Further Reading