Is neurodiversity a Global Northern White paradigm?
Authors: Nair Vishnu KK , Farah Warda , Boveda Mildred 
Published: September 2024

In this article, we engage in a critical conversation with scholars of neurodiversity. We emphasize the transformative role neurodiversity has in creating a crucial space for scholarship to emerge within the academy centering autistic voices. Despite this advancement, research addressing neurodiversity has overlooked and failed to engage with important issues of geography (Global South) and intersectionality (racialized neurodivergent other in the Global North). The first issue of geography relates to the marginalization of Global Southern epistemologies in the neurodiversity scholarship. We ask, why has neurodiversity failed to acknowledge Indigenous and Southern epistemologies and consider the evolution of relatively new Northern scholarship as the epicenter of knowledge production? Second, we highlight how intersectional experiences of the racialized other within the Global North are underrepresented and excluded from the neurodiversity scholarship. Homogenization of neurodiversity as “White Neurodiversity Movement” destabilizes the social justice and emancipatory goals of the movement. In highlighting these issues, we call attention toward knowledge systems that exist within the Global South, marginalization of scholarship and voices within neurodiversity scholarship and accentuate the need for this academic community to commit to a serious scholarship rooted and the intersectional experiences of racialized neurodivergent individuals.

Lay Abstract

Scholarship addressing neurodiversity has made enormous progress in challenging and providing alternative narratives to the dominant frameworks of medical model. Although this is a necessary and important development, scholars need to think and act beyond the immediate local context of theory generation (Global North—mainly the United Kingdom and the United States) and examine its impact on the racialized neurodivergent individuals of the Global Majority. This article will provide a decolonial framework that has been missing in the neurodiversity scholarship. The arguments presented in the article aligns well with the goals of critical autism studies and will further inform the knowledge in this area. Through a decolonial lens, this article brings the crucial issue of knowledge production outside of Global Northern countries, specifically, knowledge systems from the Global South that have parallels with neurodiversity. The article frames neurodiversity as part of an interconnected knowledge continuum rather than considering Global North alone as the only loci of knowledge production. Furthermore, it highlights the lack of focus on the intersections between racialisation and neurodivergence and the implications of this for the racialized neurodivergent individuals of the global majority. The article provides new avenues for theoretical discourses to emerge within the academy. It will have important research implications in relation to how neurodiversity will be viewed and framed outside Global Northern countries. The article highlights the importance of engaging in intersectional and interdisciplinary research and establishing a critical link with the scholars of neurodiversity, critical autism studies, and disability critical race studies.