Lark's blog and personal site https://lark.gay/processed_images/icon-padded.0eab696fef3b3f14.png Zola 2024-10-22T00:00:00+00:00 https://lark.gay/tags/neurodiversity/feed.xml Lark Aster 2024-10-22T00:00:00+00:00 2024-10-22T00:00:00+00:00 Lark Aster urn:uuid:eb6e733f-8915-4bc7-92a9-0c67e8a7ae92 <h2 id="summary">Summary</h2> <p>The book opens by explaining that traditionally, across cultures, mental and bodily health were conceptualized as a matter of balance or equilibrium rather than a pathology of specific disorders to be cured.</p> <p>However, with the Industrial Revolution came the idea that the body can be conceptualized as a machine that is either "working" or "broken". Health was assessed in terms of productivity, and productivity was assessed in terms of production output. This body-as-a-machine paradigm benefited white, nondisabled, middle-class people by justifying and reifying the hierarchies imposed by colonialism and imperialism.</p> <p>Today, we assess health in terms of deviation from a statistical mean, with bands of deviation that we consider "healthy". Historically, however, this was not the case. This concept of an "ideal man" based in systematically ranking people only came with the Industrial Revolution and its propensity to value some bodies and minds over others.</p> <p>Karl Marx's theory of alienation argues that capitalism and the specialization of labor deprive workers of independent thought the ability to self-direct. Chapman argues that while this theory was originally proposed in the context of manufacturing work in a primarily industrial economy, the concept still applies to post-industrial economies where physical labor is replaced with cognitive and emotional labor.</p> <p>Rather than some sort of disease or chemical imbalance, it is <em>capitalism</em> which disables us by holding us to impossibly stringent standards of functioning--narrowing the requirements for what is required to thrive in society. As the social model of disability posits that it is society's inability to accommodate difference that disables us, Chapman argues that capitalism creates a world tailored to the needs and abilities of a small subset of bodyminds.</p> <p>While there have been recent pushes to accommodate the differences and recognize the abilities of neurodivergent people in the workplace, these only serve to mine neurodivergent people as an untapped source of productivity. Chapman's central thesis in <em>Empire of Normality</em> is that we won't see <em>true</em> neurodivergent liberation until we fully dismantle capitalism.</p> <h2 id="review">Review</h2> <p>The ideas presented in this book are solid and well-argued, but potentially difficult to follow without some familiarity with the basic concepts of disability justice and the neurodiversity movement. I think this book may have benefited from a more accessible introduction to these concepts, building up to its more complex ideas. I think a dense text written in academic prose is somewhat at odds with the spirit of accommodating a broad spectrum of cognitive styles and abilities.</p> <p>I also think the book's focus on recounting a comprehensive history may have done it a disservice. Not having much of background in philosophy or socioeconomic theory, I struggled to follow the volley of names of people and theories and ideologies--flipping back and forth between chapters before giving up and glossing over them.</p> <p>All that being said, this book is well worth the read for anyone interested in disability justice and neurodiversity theory. Much of the field has not kept up with the pace of neurodivergent-led theory and activism, whereas <em>Empire of Normality</em> is refreshingly contemporary, relevant, and nuanced. It's also a relatively short text, which offsets its density.</p> <p>While the book's arguments are nuanced, it does not vacillate in its convictions. Chapman does not back down from their central thesis: neurodivergent liberation is impossible under capitalism.</p> Copyright © Lark Aster 2024 CC BY-NC 4.0