This piece brings together four strands of thought: I have been hugely inspired by David Gray-Hammond’s recent writings about the metaphysics of neurodivergence, Robert Chapman’s historical and mad studies framing, Nick Walker’s neuroqueer theory as transformative praxis, and Gilles Deleuze’s philosophy of difference. Each offers a potential lens for us to reconsider what it actually means to be neurodivergent, how our identity is shaped and recognised, and how it might be reimagined beyond fixed categories and labels.
David Gray-Hammond’s Beyond Definition: A Metaphysical Inquiry into Neurodivergence (2025) asks what makes someone neurodivergent in the first place. He identifies three intersecting dimensions:
1. Neurological difference from the statistical norm: in structure, function, or developmental pattern.
2. Lived cognitive difference: a phenomenological divergence in perception, attention, or reasoning.
3. Social positioning as “different”: the recognition of these differences by ourselves or others, often in ways that create barriers or stigma.
This proposes that neurodivergence is neither purely biological nor purely social, but emerges in the interplay of embodiment and environment. Tracing through history, Robert Chapman’s Mad Pride in Revolutionary England: The Ranters as Mad Activism (2025) deepens this understanding by focusing on the Ranters in the 1640’s to show how categories of difference, from “mad” to recent terms such as “neurodivergent”, are shaped by power, capitalism, and state control. Labelling is never neutral; it has been used to regulate, exclude, and also to organise resistance throughout history and continues to do so, causing so much harm to marginalised people and anyone who is different.
Where Chapman maps the long shadows of how difference has been policed, Walker turns us towards neuroqueering acts that stretch those boundaries and enables cognitive, psycholgical and somatic liberty for everyone. Nick Walker’s Neuroqueer Heresies (2021), frames the act of neuroqueering as both a deliberate refusal of neuronormative conditioning and an emergent process that unfolds in everyday life, which has the potential to create radical systemic change to benefit the whole of society.
This is in parallel to a Deleuzian perspective, which sees identity as never being static but built from many connections, relationships, and processes. Neurodivergence is not a fixed thing, but a living mix of our fluid bodyminds entangled with our environment, constantly shaped by the social, political, and ecological worlds we move through and the relationships we have.
The Metaphysics of Neurodivergence
Neurodivergence is often treated as a fact, decided by a medical diagnosis or by self-identification. Neurological variation without lived difference might go unnoticed; lived difference without social recognition might remain unlabelled or misattributed. It is the interaction with norms, expectations, and power structures that creates and solidifies the socially constructed category of neurodivergence, even for those of us who are innately different from birth.
Gray-Hammond suggests the idea of neurodivergence rests on three intertwined dimensions. None alone fully defines it, but together, they create its lived reality, of these, being positioned as “different” or “weird” often shapes daily life most directly and affects our wellbeing and how well we can function and thrive. This raises their deeper question: Is neurodivergence defined by the way it is lived and experienced, or by an underlying difference that exists whether or not it is recognised?
From a Deleuzian perspective, differences are not static traits but elements of a shifting assemblage. Neurodivergence is not a fixed essence but an ongoing process of becoming, shaped by sensory and cognitive patterns, environments, and cultural narratives, all filtered through intersectional privilege and oppression. Difference is generative, producing new perceptions, movements of thought, and ways of living, even if it is temporarily somewhat stabilised or held through labels such as being Autistic or ADHD.
Gray-Hammond distinguishes between essential properties, those without which neurodivergence would not be what it means today and accidental properties, which can change without altering the underlying being. Essential properties might include monotropic attentional flow, sensory processing patterns, physical disabilities, or other health differences. Accidental properties might include diagnostic labels, learned coping strategies, or outward behaviours. This matters because it undermines claims that compliance-based behavioural interventions “cure” neurodivergence, it suggests that outward behaviour can be suppressed or reshaped, but our essential cognitive and sensory architecture often remains split, fractured by trauma and masking, leading to burnout and mental health crises.
In Empire of Normality (2023), Chapman reminds us that the notion of “normal” is not an objective truth but a social construct, shaped by cultural and historical contexts. Over time what is seen as “normal” and what is deemed as “pathological” have shifted, not because humans have changed dramatically, but because society’s priorities and systems have. These boundaries have often been drawn to serve industry, capitalism, and the institutions that sustain them, rewarding some ways of thinking and being while excluding or penalising others. A clear example is the behaviourist approach entrenched in the US & UK school systems, where reward charts and social stories enforce neuronormative behaviours, harming Autistic children and pushing them to deny their needs expecting them to fit in at all costs.
In this light, Gray-Hammond’s question, ‘who counts as neurodivergent, and under what conditions?’ is not only personal or diagnostic, but it is political. It invites us to question the shifting line between “different” and “acceptable,” “normal” and “abnormal,” and to consider whether this line can be moved, reshaped, challenged, or even erased.
Walker’s neuroqueer theory builds on this idea, framing neurodivergence not only as a site of vulnerability for stigma and oppression, but as a space of creative potential. Neuroqueering resists the idea that support or education should aim to make neurodivergent people “normal”. Instead, it treats difference as a strength, a way to stretch the boundaries of what is possible, to reimagine living, thinking, and relating. It holds space for diverging even further from the norm, for exploring new ways of being and learning, and for the radical possibility that anyone can become neurodivergent through the act of neuroqueering and by choosing to move away from normativity.
When we see neurodivergence as dynamic, shaped by relationships, environments, and histories rather than as a fixed list of traits, we can step beyond the rigid binary of “neurotypical” vs “neurodivergent.” This opens neuroqueering possibilities for a more fluid and liberating society, one that values diversity not as a box to tick but as a living, evolving force. It is an invitation to embrace difference, explore transformative ways of becoming, and continually reinvent ourselves, our work and the worlds we share. However, even as we reimagine neurodivergence in more fluid and relational ways, the language we use and the labels we inherit carry the weight of the histories that have shaped how difference is seen and treated.
Hidden History of Neurodivergent Labels
The words and language we use to describe people have never been neutral. They are shaped by politics, history, and power. Robert Chapman’s historical account of Mad Pride shows how labels for cognitive difference often come from systems built to manage and control people. In the 1640s, for example, radical groups like the Ranters challenged the strict religious and social rules of their time. They refused to conform, rejected rules imposed from above, and gathered in ways that disrupted the status quo. They didn’t use today’s words as being neurodivergent but they clearly didn’t fit into the expected norms of the time. Their defiance and solidarity can be seen as early acts of Mad Activism resisting the idea that there is only one “right” way to think, feel, or live.
Neurodivergent people have often been denied the right to name and define our own realities. For most of history, “official” knowledge about us has come from deficit-based medical models, shaped by institutions and used to serve those in power.
As I shared in my blog ‘Autistic Mental Health: Beyond the Pathology Paradigm‘ (Aug, 2025), research suggests that as many as 8 in 10 Autistic people have a mental health condition. Sadly, Autistic people have been found to have up to an eightfold increased risk of death by suicide compared to non-Autistic people (Brown et al., 2024). For Autistic children, the risk of thinking about or attempting suicide is 28 times higher than for their non-Autistic peers. These are not just numbers, they are lives cut short by systems that fail to meet our needs.
The latest Assuring Transformation NHS Digital data (April 2025) paints an equally troubling picture:
- 2,025 Autistic people and people with a learning disability are in mental health hospitals in England. Of these, 1,455 (72%) are Autistic.
- 240 under-18s are in inpatient units. Of these, 230 (96%) are Autistic.
- The number of Autistic people without a learning disability detained in mental health hospitals has increased by 141% since 2015.
- In 2015, Autistic people made up 38% of the total in hospital. Now it is 72%(National Autistic Society, 2025).
These statistics are not personal failings, they are systemic failures of education, healthcare, mental health services, and broader society to support Autistic people and those of us who are different in ways that affirm our needs, identities, and ways of being. This is epistemic injustice, as the people most affected are excluded from the conversation, and the words we need to describe our lives are often missing, invalidated or treated as problems. A clear example of this is neurodivergent experiences of burnout.
When a community lacks language for its own experience or our experiences aren’t believed, it is easier to cause harm. It’s not just about being misunderstood; it’s about blocking self-understanding, choice, and autonomy. Every label we inherit, from being “Autistic” or “weird,” “defiant’ or “disordered”, carries a built-in set of assumptions about how we should be seen and treated. Labelling can trap us in someone else’s story…..or it can be reclaimed and re-storyed to tell our own narratives.
The power to name and label, and use certain language shapes who is recognised as being fully human and “right” who is pushed to the margins. The meaning of labels is always shifting; institutions try to lock differences into fixed categories, diagnoses, risk labels, and lists of “deficits.” In response some communities are pushing back, reclaiming words like “Crip”, “Autistic” or “Mad” and filling them with their own values, histories, and pride. But changing words alone is not enough, real change needs systemic transformation, and neuroqueer theory offers ways to put that into practice.
Refusing Normal: The Practice of Neuroqueering
Neuroqueering can happen on many levels and in many different ways; from the small, everyday choices we make in how we use our bodyminds to the larger work of changing systems. On a personal level, it can mean moving, speaking, or sensing in ways that feel natural to us, even if they go against social expectations. On a collective level, it involves challenging and dismantling the systems that enforce able-bodiedness, demand constant productivity, and dictate narrow, “acceptable” ways of socialising and communicating.
However, living neuroqueerly by stimming openly, rejecting therapies aimed at making us “normal,” choosing to play, learn, work, or rest in our own ways can still lead to exclusion, discrimination. It is a risk without being in a safe environment with people who understand and accept your authentic self and ways of becoming.
Neuroqueer theory recognises that neurodivergence doesn’t stand apart from other forms of oppression. The same bodymind that pushes back against neuronormativity is also navigating intersectionality, racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, class inequality, and the impacts of colonialism. True freedom for neurodivergent people means breaking down ableism and these other systems together. Deleuze, like Walker and Gray-Hammond, sees this refusal to “fit in” not only as resistance but as something full of creative potential. Embracing difference isn’t just about stepping away from the norm; it’s where new ways of living, relating, and imagining can begin and transformations can emerge.
Neurodivergence isn’t something that lives inside an individual’s brain; it takes shape in our bodyminds, who we are is inseparable from the rhizomatic networks of meaning and care, or their absence, that surround us and our environments. Liberation needs to be a collective flow: changing life for one means changing it for all of us. It needs to be co-created through the ways we think, feel, and act, shaped by how others respond to us, and vice versa.
Neuroqueer praxis is both personal and social, it is the daily choice to resist being pulled into the norm, while building community solidarity to challenge the systems that enforce neuronormativity. It’s about creating and sharing new ways of knowing, and about changing the very conditions that limit who we can be, moving beyond labels and expectations, so we can live as our authentic selves and build supportive, meaningful communities.
A neuroqueer politics of difference does not seek permission or validation from systems that marginalise. It works to build worlds where many ways of being are not only accepted but recognised as essential to our shared survival and joy. To live fully as ourselves is not just inclusion, it is the ongoing work of reworlding.
References
Chapman, R. (2023). Empire of Normality, Neurodiversity and Capitalism. Pluto Press.
Chapman, R. (2025). Mad Pride in Revolutionary England: The Ranters as Mad Activism. [Manuscript in preparation].
Deleuze, G. (1994). Difference and Repetition (P. Patton, Trans.). Columbia University Press. (Original work published 1968)
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1994). What is philosophy? (H. Tomlinson & G. Burchell, Trans.). Columbia University Press. (Original work published 1991)
Gray-Hammond, D. (2024, March 21). The metaphysics of neurodivergence. Emergent Divergence.
https://emergentdivergence.com/2024/03/21/the-metaphysics-of-neurodivergence/
Walker, N. (2019). Transformative Somatic Practices And Autistic Potentials: An Autoethnographic Exploration. (Doctoral dissertation). California Institute of Integral Studies.
Walker, N. (2021). Neuroqueer heresies: Notes on the Neurodiversity Paradigm, Autistic Empowerment, and Postnormal Possibilities. Autonomous Press.
