More Realms

Back to Autistic Realms…

Tag: neuroqueer

  • Folding Worlds: Monotropism & Neuroqueering Attention

    Folding Worlds: Monotropism & Neuroqueering Attention

    by Helen Edgar — More Realms

    “The whole world is only a virtuality that currently exists only in the folds of the soul which convey it, the soul implementing inner pleats through which it endows itself with representation of the enclosed world.” — Gilles Deleuze, The Fold (1993, P. 24).

    Thoughts…..

    I am exploring how Deleuze’s ideas in The Fold entwines with the theory of monotropism and the lived textures of Autistic perception and attention through a neuroqueer lens.

    What if monotropic attention and perception is folded, what happens when we unfold?

    What if Autistic time moves in spirals, not lines?

    Folding Worlds

     “The world is an infinite series of curvatures” 

    Sometimes, when I’m deeply absorbed, following the rhythm and flow of an idea, a line of flight, or feeling sound ripple through air the world seems to bend inward. Time loosens, boundaries blur and my mind folds into the moment until it feels like my thought, body, and world are all moving together as one continuous curve.

    Deleuze, in The Fold, imagined reality itself as endlessly pleated, an intricate fabric of curves and contours where inside and outside are never truly separate, each perception and experience establishes ‘folds in the soul’. (p. 112) As Autistic people our sensory systems are more porous, each life, each experience, each moment, is a fold within this larger flow of existence, all entangling together with the environment around us.

    As an Autistic person, you may feel like I do, that you live in the liminal spaces, the in-between. The world doesn’t divide neatly into subjects and objects but moves almost as if it is a single and multiple simultaneously, perhaps holographic , a folded plane of becoming.

    Monotropism (Murray et al., 2005) is the theory that explains how Autistic and ADHD experience is shaped by deep, focused attention. Instead of our attention spreading thinly across many things, our attention folds inward, gathering tightly around may be just one or a few single streams or tunnels of interest or sensation at any given time. It’s not a limitation, it’s a different rhythm, it is how we experience flow and can be a really energising and regulating experience when we are looped into something positive that helps us. Our minds tend to curve toward what holds meaning, creating a rich, textured world from within that fold where our attention dwells.

    Where neurotypical attention might skim across multiple channels of attention, monotropic attention lingers and has capacity to stay focused for long periods, especially when in the right supportive environments. Monotropic attention inhabits, it listens deeply and it is in these moments of flow, the world is not distant as some may think, rather the world is inside us, rich and intense. It is like it is folded through our senses, our language, our movement to such intensity we become-with our surroundings.

    Unfolding

    “A fold is always folded within a fold, like a cavern in a cavern”. (P.6)

    Folds can be fragile, like origami. When too many demands pull at once, such as sensory input or social expectations, it is like the fold can’t stretch without straining and something has to give before it breaks. Overload, fragmentation, and burnout emerge when the world presses too hard against our natural curvature and forces the fold to carry more than it has capacity for. We may experience more meltdowns or shutdowns and over a longer period could enter a full burnout. Burnout, in this sense, isn’t failure of our body minds; it’s like a wound in the fold. It happens when we are forced to unfold too quickly, without time or gentleness and without the right support.


    Liminal Folds

    The space between inside and outside, that delicate threshold in the liminal zone, is where I live and perhaps many other Autistic people live too. It’s the edge of sensory, emotional and social attunement, where the world can feel both too near and too far at the same time. Safety, trust, and co-regulation allow the fold to breathe, it gives space to expand and recover. To unfold safely, enables us to unmask ‘to increase and grow’.

    When others meet us at our own tempo and in our own authentic ways, our fold can open slowly, naturally, toward a node of connection with others. It strengthens the vulnerable liminal spaces in-between, it can be empowering and gives us energy to follow that curve of a fold and see where it takes us, to resist neuronormative linear ways of being.

    Neuroqueer Curvatures

    To neuroqueer is the act of living otherwise, resisting the norms that demand sameness, linearity, and temporality. It invites us to honour different ways of moving through the world: curved, recursive, and rhizomatic.

    Through this lens, embracing your Autistic/ADHD monotropicness can become a neuroqueer ecology. It is a way of being that disrupts the assumption that we must flow in straight lines and contort ourselves and fold and contort ourselves to fit into heirarchies and systems. To embrace the liminal and the Autistic fold is an act of quiet defiance, a refusal to flatten complexity or to perform productivity and neuronormative expectations at the expense of our own well-being.

    Our monotropic deep focus isn’t a deficit, it’s an orientation, it is a different way of being and living. To embrace flow and see where the fold takes us. It reveals a world that thrives on depth and immersion rather than breadth. To move with with the flow of our monotropic attention, along the fold is to inhabit curved time, the slow, spiral rhythm of a mind that folds toward what matters most to us.

    Folding Time

    For many of us, life doesn’t move in a straight sequence. It curves back, loops, and gathers around moments of attention. This is folded time, neuroqueer temporality or what others have called mad time, time as felt texture rather than moving like clockwork.

    When I am in deep flow, the past and future dissolve into the intensity of an ever expansive ‘now-ness’, when the fold releases, I spill gently back into a wider space, I always need time to recalibrate, to find the edges again and to find something to loop and back hook into before I can move on.

    To live through folded time is to understand that attention has its own seasons. Some days are for spiralling inward, composting thoughts and gathering energy and others may be for stretching outward, connecting, creating and reaching new nodes.

    Folding with the World

    “Perception establishes the folds in the soul” (P. 112)

    In the folds of Autistic attention and perception lie whole worlds of knowing and becoming. Through monotropism and neuroqueer theory, we can reimagine these folds not as constraints, but as living spaces of creativity, connection, and a different temporality.

    Within these curvatures, difference becomes depth, a way of sensing the world through texture, rhythm, and relation rather than conformity. Our attention moves like tidewater, folding and flowing inward to nourish the self and unfolding and rippling outward to meet the world again.

    When we are allowed to move at our own pace, these folds open into more realms of possibility, spaces where curiosity can root, where safety and belonging can take form.

    To live within the Autistic fold is to recognise that we are not separate from the world, but continuous with it, each of us a unique curvature in the greater flow of being. By embracing our folds and natural flow of monotropic attention, we can honour the quiet sensory moments, our rhizomatic ways of being, and the beautifully entangled ways we come to know, feel, and create within our selves and connect with others.

    Reflections

    How does your attention fold?

    What might unfold if your natural rhythms were met, not resisted?


    References


    Deleuze, G. (1993). The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque. U of Minnesota Press. (quotes from Continuum edition, The Athone Press, 2006).

    Walker, N. (2021). Neuroqueer heresies: Notes on the Neurodiversity Paradigm, Autistic Empowerment, and Postnormal Possibilities. Autonomous Press

  • Caverns, Pleats and Folds

    Caverns, Pleats and Folds

    Cartographers are people who create maps, and they transform physical geography into an accessible format so people can navigate in and through the spaces of the world. I recently watched a National Geographic documentary about caving ‘ Explorer: The Deepest Cave | Disney+ (disneyplus.com’). It led me to consider the underground maps inside the earth, the connections, pathways and hidden caverns that have not yet been explored. There is a whole space deep below the ground where you are currently that offers new possibilities, and it is within these folds of rocks that form the earth there are even more folds and spaces full of potential to explore. Whilst watching this film, I related it to the potential for people and thinking about how we need time and space to explore and discover what is inside us, time and space to make connections with others to give our lives meaning and time to explore the spaces within our folds, pleats, caverns and channels.

    A particular moment in the documentary sparked my imagination. Around 11 minutes into the film, the cavers were trying to find the best route to go next. They created a small amount of smoke as they explained that ‘the stronger the smoke, the bigger the spots between the rocks are,’ which would indicate a path for them to explore. They said, ‘The wind can go places that we can’t. So the question is, can we follow the wind?’

    ‘Can we follow the wind’?

    This leads me to Deleuze and his work around The Fold (1993). ‘A fold is always folded within a fold, like a cavern in a cavern. The unit of matter, the smallest element of the labyrinth, is the fold…’ (pg. 6). A fold is like a continuous curve; there is always a deeper element. I see this as much like a cave with pleats in its geography, where there are ‘folds of winds, of waters, fire and earth’. As I sat watching this programme with my son, I began to think about the infinite nature of our bodyminds and how caving could work as an analogy to describe the internal process of neuroqueering that is expressed outwardly on a cartographer’s map.

    Neuroqueering and being a part of the neuroqueering community is the equivalent of trying to work your way around a rhizome, another concept Deleuze and Guattari (1987) discuss in their book One Thousand Plateaus. The outward map of how we live our lives in society reflects how we present ourselves and our bodies. This map can also reflect the journey our bodyminds take over time as we age. Increasingly, people are leaving digital trails of their thoughts all over the internet. They are making connections within these spaces, leading to an ever-increasing multidimensional map between cyberspace and the reality of where we are physically.

    Choosing to neuroqueer your bodymind can be seen as an act of rebellion. However, I see it more as an act of seeking connections at a much deeper level with those in a similar space to you rather than needing to outwardly represent ‘queering’ in the way perhaps the punk movement did in the 1980s. Maps are a way we navigate paths as we head towards a destination, or they are used to reflect on past journeys and movements. If you choose to neuroqueer, you may find an intersection where the digital paths of the internet communities meet the folds inside your bodyminds. Within these rhizomatic communities, meaning is potentially being created for so many people who are otherwise unable to connect or feel a connection with people outside of these spaces in their local communities.

    There is a natural human need to feel understood and connected; connections build relationships and support good mental health. For some people, those connections and relationships may not look different from the more conventional norms the majority of society holds but are equally valuable. For people who feel marginalised either by neurodivergence, disability or by being in another minority group, there is often no space already carved out for support and building connections in local communities. This can cause feelings of isolation and disconnection. Yet, the need to find people who understand and can connect within the same folds, with similar interests and values, can lead people to create their own communities.

    It feels like a rabbit warren of underground tunnels and caves where people meet, mainly through online social media platforms. The continuous physical growth of these spaces where people are connecting is slowly creating ripples and heading into real family spaces and showing a genuine need for change in our education system as more and more children are showing how the current frameworks are just not meeting needs and resulting in school attendance difficulties and mental health concerns. There is a rise in the UK in families actively seeking alternative pathways through home education or alternative provision routes. Neuroqueering is not just a philosophical theory; it is about actively looking for positive change and creating new paths in your life and for your family towards a happier future.

    Deleuze considers if ‘the world is infinitely cavernous if worlds exist in the tiniest bodies, it is because everywhere there can be found a spirit in matter’ (1993, p.7). This supports the idea of energy flow and the importance of the soul as a subject if we want to go beyond any boundaries and evolve and improve our mental health and that of our families. If this is the case, we need to unfold ourselves; this could be linked to a much deeper concept of autistic unmasking, where you find ‘some little opening’ of possibility within yourself to expand your body-mind; it is a space within a tiny fold / unfolding that we may be able to begin to neuroqueer. Much like the cavers who have to physically twist, turn and contort their bodies to fit through the gaps to find new caverns, we can find new spaces within and between the folds of our bodyminds through neuroqueering.

    The potential to neuroqueer is inside us all, within a fold in a cavern. This may feel much deeper within some people than others due to the heaviness of neuronormativity, adding its layers and creating tighter folds for some people. It would be interesting to discuss if the concept of folds and caverns within autistic people is more porous or open to the possibilities of neuroqueering than non-autistic people.

    Neuroqueering could enable a metamorphosis, a transformation process from within a fold. This is like how Deleuze describes a butterfly being ‘folded into the caterpillar that will soon unfold’. Deleuze finishes his first chapter by describing how ‘ the Fold is always between two folds’. Neuroqueering offers the potential to explore what is between the multiple folds and creases we live in and that are within us.

    Let’s ‘follow the wind’ and see where neuroqueering takes us.

    Find out more:

    https://stimpunks.org/glossary/autistic-rhizome/

    https://emergentdivergence.com/2023/04/21/neuro-anarchy-and-the-rise-of-the-autistic-rhizome/

  • Neuroqueering in the Liminal Spaces

    Neuroqueering in the Liminal Spaces

    Neuroqueering in Liminal Spaces

    “By silencing our bodyminds, they (neurotypical society) have halted the growth of a chaotic self. We are no longer able to move fluidly through our experience, instead frozen like ice on an arctic tundra” (Gray-Hammond, 2023)

    David Gray-Hammond (Emergent Divergence) and I are responding to each other’s blogs to help expand the Autistic Rhizome. We are adding nodules to the webs of discussions happening in the Dark Forests (Boren, 2024) of the online communities and creating an open-source bank of writing to carve a path for community discussion about neuroqueering.

    David is continuing his ‘Reclaiming Neurofuturism’ series and has responded to my post The Double Empathy Problem is DEEP. He explored the litigious nature of disabled embodiment and questioned the intentional creation of minority silos via the double empathy divide (Milton, 2012). In support of my own thinking, David also suggests that we need to embrace the healing power of liminal spaces.

    I am writing extensively about the in-between, liminal spaces and Ma as a potential chapter for Nick Walker’s new Neuroqueer Anthology (struggling to write it coherently so that it may make sense to others, but it is slowly forming!). Liminality has been a long term passion of mine, tunnelling back over 30 years. As an autistic person, I feel I have lived my entire life in the liminal. I have always been in-between or on the edges of social groups, always struggling with an internal battle due to the effects masking has on my sensory system. Being monotropic has meant the in-between is felt intensely; it has led to cycles of burnout and impacts my mental, physical and sensory health.

    I am still living in the liminal, on the edges, often in spaces filled with anxiety and uncertainty. However, I have gone through a huge and difficult process of unlearning and relearning over the past few years since I realised I was autistic, rejecting the deficit ways of thinking about neurodivergence and dismantling my own ableist thought patterns. Patterns that have been reinforced over decades by the weight of neuronormativity. I am grateful for the autistic communities I am part of for supporting me and providing cushioning to help me navigate my way through this messy process whilst trying to prevent myself heading into a deeper burnout cycle. However, I still feel like I am living on the edges, even within the most caring and supportive neurodivergent communities.

    The years of masking, the impact of living in a neuronormative ableist-driven society and going through cycles of burnout has, in many ways resulted in my bodymind being ‘silenced’, getting stuck. David echoed this feeling as he explained;

    “By silencing our bodyminds, they (neurotypical society) have halted the growth of a Chaotic Self . We are no longer able to move fluidly through our experience, instead frozen like ice on an arctic tundra.”

    Tundras are cold and harsh environments, but biodiversity adapts to the landscape and the short growing seasons, plants and animals transform their ways of being to survive. Tundras offer some hope that life can exist even in the cruellest of environments.

    However, we don’t want people feeling frozen, stuck on an arctic tundra, trapped in endless freeze/thaw/burnout cycles. People deserve more than a life in survival mode where they are constantly on high alert for danger and in looping patterns of sensory regulation-seeking behaviour, living in Meerkat Mode (Adkin, 2023). In Walker’s inspiring presentation, ‘Expanding the Creative Potentials of Human Neurodiversity’ at ITAKOM (It Takes All Kinds of Minds Conference, March 2023), she explored how we need to work together so we can flourish so that the;

    ‘creative synergy, the chemistry that is between and among different minds’ can emerge…so the magic happens’.

    We need our beautifully different bodyminds to work together; we need to develop a common language and be open to different ways of thinking, more accepting and inclusive. Radical inclusivity is a concept Ryan Boren (Stimpunks) and I have been exploring as part of our Neuroqueer Learning Spaces Project. There is no single path to radical inclusivity; it begins with being embodied, of being open to connecting with yourself and others, it is cultivated by ongoing neuroqueering efforts to meet needs, it is a confrontation with normativity. Radical inclusivity is more than accommodating needs; it is about fostering cognitive and somatic liberty to enable the potential of neuroqueering to open up new, as yet unknown possibilities.

    Radical Inclusive spaces would benefit everyone. They are embodied spaces of deep connection and safety where people can tune in and be responsive to the needs of others. They offer a deeper connection, and they close the DEEP double empathy gap that I feel is at the root of so much hurt, pain, disconnect and disorientation. For radical inclusion, we need to work together. We need connections, a shared deep understanding, an embodied presence, a sense of meaning, and a sense of belonging. We need community, love and kindness to expand the rhizome.

    Deleuze and Guattari’s One Thousand Plateaus (1980) explores the concepts of the rhizome and also the importance of plateaus being transforming spaces that resist the linear hierarchy of neuronormativity and embrace the potential of the multiplicity of rhizomatic connections. The possibility to use these concepts to explore neuroqueer theory shines through One Thousand Plateaus, it is like a sunbeam bringing hope in Ma, inbetween the doorways of the liminal spaces that so many of us may feel we are living in.

    Rhizomes are open-ended; they have no middle, they have no start and there is no end. (Much like this series of blogs between David and I, I am again beginning in the Middle Entrance, again. You are joining conversations that have been evolving over the past two years in David’s Emergence Divergence Discord server, a node of the autistic rhizome, Open invite to join us there!).

    In summary:

    Rhizomes are interconnected networks of shared ideas and experiences filled with potential. Much like neuroqueer theory, rhizomes have multiple entry points, they are non-heirarchical. Anyone can neuroqueer, and anyone can enter a rhizome at any point, at any time, if the desire and intent are inside them to want to transform and explore neuroqueering.

    Smooth Spaces challenge the idea of traditional hierarchy. They are continuous spaces where the theories of Monotropism (Murray et al., 2005) and Flow Theory (Heasman et al., 2024) can flourish and open up creative neuroqueer potential, an emerging way of being. I experience smooth spaces as the spaces in the gaps of the rhizome; they are the liminal spaces.

    Plateaus are spaces of stability; they offer balance and equilibrium, equity, potential for awe and wonder and further expansion and transformation.

    Liminal Spaces provide smooth, open plateaus, spaces to connect, transform, and neuroqueer from the safety of our rhizomatic communities.

    This new series of blogs will provide a plateau for discussion, a space where the intensity you may feel of being stuck at or between a node point of the rhizome can gain some stability and grounding. We are seeking to expand our bodyminds as we write and connect with others, exploring the dynamics and discord of the DEEP Double Empathy Extreme Problem. As Walker (2019, pg 283) suggested in her thesis;

    “we need to “look beyond social cues to the deeper dynamics of interacting bodies, exceptional tactile and kinesthetic sensitivity, and affinity for what I’ve termed the aesthetics of emergence”

    We are opening discussions to explore the endless possibilities of an awe-inspiring neuroqueer future, to help bridge the DEEP empathy gap so many people are experiencing and to work towards a radically inclusive society.

    “To recognise our responsibility to each other lies in our power to create better futures for each other. Connection is the striking surface of a hammer on the walls of the masters house.” (Gray-Hammond, 2024)

    **These blogs will also form part of the discussions and feed into the Neuroqueer Learning Spaces Project I am developing with Ryan Boren (Stimpunks)**

    References

    Adkin, T., & Gray-Hammond, D. (2023). Meerkatting — Emergent Divergence. Emergent Divergence. https://emergentdivergence.com/tag/meerkatting/

    Boren, R. (2024, June 9). Campfires in dark Forests: Community brings safety to the serendipity. Stimpunks Foundation. https://stimpunks.org/2024/05/16/campfires-in-dark-forests-community-brings-safety-to-the-serendipity/

    Edgar, H. (2024, June 15) The Double Empathy Problem is DEEP — MoreRealms — Medium. Medium. https://medium.com/@helenrealms/the-double-empathy-problem-is-deep-2364b3412c39

    Edgar, H. (2023, June 27). Middle entrance — MoreRealms — Medium. Medium. https://medium.com/@helenrealms/middle-entrance-973dc06920b0

    Gray-Hammond, D. (2023). Reclaiming Neurofuturism: Rhizomatic Communities and the Chaotic Self. Emergent Divergence. https://emergentdivergence.com/2023/04/30/reclaiming-neurofuturism-rhizomatic-communities-and-the-chaotic-self/

    Gray-Hammond, D. (2023). Autistic rhizome — emergent divergence. Emergent Divergence. https://emergentdivergence.com/category/autism/autistic-community/autistic-rhizome/

    Gray-Hammond, D., & Gray-Hammond, D. (2024, June 15). Reclaiming Neurofuturism: Responding to “The Double Empathy Problem is DEEP” by Edgar, 2024. Emergent Divergence. https://emergentdivergence.com/2024/06/16/reclaiming-neurofuturism-responding-to-the-double-empathy-problem-is-deep-by-edgar-2024/

    Heasman, B. et al., Towards autistic flow theory: A non-pathologising conceptual approach. Journal for Theory of Social Behaviour, https://doi.org/10.1111/jtsb.12427

    Milton, D. E. (2012). On the ontological status of autism: the ‘double empathy problem.’ Disability & Society, 27(6), 883–887. https://doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2012.710008

    Murray, D., Lesser, M., & Lawson, W. (2005c). Attention, monotropism and the diagnostic criteria for autism. Autism, 9(2), 139–156. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362361305051398

    Nick Walker. (2023, March 19). Dr Nick Walker • Expanding the Creative Potentials of Human Neurodiversity • ITAKOM Conference 2023 [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOITXkj5bqM

    Walker, N. (2019). Transformative Somatic Practices and Autistic Potentials: An Autoethnographic Exploration. California Institute of Integral Studies ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, 2019. 27665905.

  • Middle Entrance

    Middle Entrance

    I am starting my new blog in the middle. I am in the middle of what is known as ‘midlife’ as I am forty-five; I am also mid-career, having resigned from teaching and not yet working in any other defined role. I also live much of my life in and between the online (primarily neurodivergent) communities.

    These spaces have become my places of safety, support, and escapism and are a wonderful opportunity to develop connections. Henri Lefebvre (1991), in his work The Production of Space, explores the concept of space being a ‘living space’. Lefebvre wrote, “Nothing disappears completely… In space, what came earlier continues to underpin what follows… Pre-existing space underpins not only durable spatial arrangements but also representational spaces and their attendant imagery and mythic narratives.”

    Lefebvre’s ideas support my thoughts around the concept of space being alive; I feel space (like our own identity and energy) is fluid. Space constantly changes and depends on the interactions of those around us and objects within other spaces. I am exploring ways of finding meaning in the spaces within what could be considered ‘ma’ to enable thoughts to develop and create connections with others. I believe this could be seen as a form of neuroqueering as defined in Nick Walker’s (2021) book Neuroqueer Heresies. I am considering if the energy created by these connections can lead to even more new spaces, ideas, and possibilities by subverting the expectations of the normativity of relationships and communication.

    ‘Ma’ is a Japanese concept and has no English equivalent but can be loosely translated as the space between things or a pause between events. Fletcher (2001), in The Art of Looking Sideways, quotes Isaac Stern as describing music as “that little bit between each note — silences which give the form”. In their book A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari (1980) explore the concept of a ‘rhizomatic’ model of thought and ‘shifting bodies’. I have been thinking about how ‘ma’ relates Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophy and neuroqueering by enabling the physical space between people to create the potential for energy to grow.

    In our everyday lives, at this very moment, people are joining online communities for information, to seek understanding, and connecting with others. The general themes of this blog series will include an exploration of; the philosophy of Deleuze, the history of art (specifically the minimalist movement), the connections between language and the forming of relationships and an exploration of Nick Walker’s (2021) theory of neuroqueering. I aim to demonstrate how we can find a space to nourish and support mental well-being at some intersection between these concepts and topics for those interested and open to exploring these ideas.

    I can already feel a deep flow weaving between these topics, even though that is currently happening in a slow, fuzzy, hazy way. My own thoughts will inevitably be shaped by the interactions and discussions I have with others about these subjects. I aim to create a singular, more coherent chapter which will contribute towards a larger anthology of work from within the community interested in neuroqueer theory. I want to be transparent about my aim with anyone who engages in shared stories and conversations with me on this journey. I value connections and collaboration and hope this will draw various people and communities together that are interested and resonate with some of these ideas.

    In 1943, T.S. Eliot’s collection of four poems were collated to form Four Quartets. The final poem in this series Little Gidding (1942), continues Eliot’s exploration of time and our connections with each other through generations and current society.

    “What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.”

    This quote seems particularly relevant to my deep interest in evolving spirals and finding meaning in gaps and spaces. I am returning to themes I started exploring almost 25–30 years ago from the new perspective and understanding of my autistic identity and, more recently, through an exploration of neuroqueering.

    I visualise relationships and ways of being as constantly evolving spirals that spin in and out in a multidimensional way. Different connections and experiences add to and contribute to a wider, deeper fluid rhizomatic network of potential that is always in a constant state of flux. This idea of an evolving spiral and returning to a new beginning in the middle is beautifully reflected in Eliot’s poem Little Gidding:

    “We shall not cease from exploration
    And the end of all our exploring
    Will be to arrive where we started
    And know the place for the first time.
    Through the unknown, remembered gate
    When the last of earth left to discover
    Is that which was the beginning;
    At the source of the longest river
    The voice of the hidden waterfall
    And the children in the apple-tree
    Not known, because not looked for
    But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
    Between two waves of the sea”    .

    — T.S. Eliot, from “Little Gidding,” Four Quartets (Gardners Books; Main edition, April 30, 2001) Originally published 1943.”

    I have struggled to start this blog as I believe there is no definitive way to start anything; finding a specific point of anything is impossible as there will always be multiple folds, pleats and deeper intersections, which could be classed as a ‘start’. I see this as trying to find a space ‘between two waves of the sea’ as Eliot wrote. There will always be something preceding and will always be another connection and intersection. However, if we can open our bodyminds, we can find moments of stillness, a pause, and meaning can grow from within the spaces between objects and others; this is where creativity and potential evolves.

    In The Fold (1988), Deleuze explores this idea in his first chapter, ‘The Pleats of Matter’ by drawing on the work of Leibniz and Monadology (1714) in a beautiful description which summarises the infinite amount of folds and pleats that can occur within origami where, the ‘a fold is always folded within a fold, like a cavern in a cavern’. This concept of the monad further explores the folds of time and space as a continuous process of ‘becoming.’ This is something I will be returning to.

    Throughout my following few blogs, I aim to ‘unfold’ and explore The Fold and other writing more deeply. I see these folds as a fluid state rather than a defined line, and it is within this fluidity that neuroqueering ideas can be further explored too. I visualise this being similar to the autistic experience of monotropism. This concept evolved from the work of Murray, Lawson and Lesser (2005), which I will also return to in a future blog; I see this as a way of identifying and understanding my experiences and how I relate to others.

    Deleuze’s idea of folds and pleats fits into my interpretation of neuroqueering, which allows infinite possibilities to be created by subverting expectations and exploring how far your bodymind can go. Deleuze writes, “Unfolding is not the contrary of folding, but follows the fold up to the following fold. Particles are ‘turned into folds’ that a ‘contrary effort changes over and again’. It is a chance for infinite possibilities and potential for everyone and a way to embrace neurodiversity in the purest sense of the word, meaning everyone has potential.

    Nick Walker (2023), at the ITAKOM conference, shared some of her ideas in her talk titled, ‘Expanding the Creative Potentials of Human Neurodiversity’. In this talk, she described the potential of neuroqueering to enable infinite possibilities through a collective synergy. It is through connecting with others that the ‘magic happens’. This suggests that the magic happens in the gaps and the spaces where the potential is within ‘ma’. I want to explore the ways that challenge our need to rely on language and words to allow us to discover the possibilities and endless interpretations of neurodiversity, where we can just ‘be’.

    The concept of ‘ma’ represents a space of potentiality, a space that is open to the emergence of new ideas and experiences. Through the context of Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophical writings, minimalist art and neuroqueer theory, I would like to explore and develop a deeper understanding of how embracing the concept of ‘ma’ offers a way of creating connections and understanding the relationships that exist between people, things, and ideas.

    My next blog will build on starting in the ‘middle space’, and I will explore Deleuze & Guattari’s philosophical term ‘rhizome’ as discussed in their work, A Thousand Plateaus. I am going to relate this non-hierarchical concept to the neurodivergent community and neuroqueer theory as I explore the idea that there is ‘no definable entrance or exit point or centre’ and there are ‘multiple ways in and out’ of experiences and our connections with others.

    Helen Edgar (25.06.2023)
    © MoreRealms