community - Emergent Divergence

Sep 17 2023

Reclaiming Neurofuturism: Understanding neuronormativity and the containment of Autistic experience

Much of western society is predicated on the idea that knowledge consists of a variety of objective truths. When we hear the word “disability” or “autism” we are guided to understand the word in a particular way. This unfortunately fails to capture the dynamic and highly contextual nature of human understanding. Neuronormativity, then, is an attempt to remove context from human neurological experience.

The creation of worlds

Knowledge is socially constructed. Each word we speak carries with it the effect of each interaction we have had with society. When I state that I am Disabled or Autistic, I inevitably will have a different understanding of what I mean than the meaning you will draw from it.

The space between the context of our understanding can be conceived of as the space between worlds. While our world may carry striking similarities, we can never objectively prove that they are the same. Rather than occupying a shared reality, we create contextual worlds that may cross boundaries with each other in places.

Neuronormativity and the elimination of context

When I consider normativity that is directed toward our embodiment and experience of the world, I see the death of context. Neuronormativity is that clandestine effort to label some contextual worlds as “wrong” and bolster some as “closer to the truth”. What is important here is that while neuronormativity claims an objective truth to one’s neurocognitive machinations, no human ever achieves the objective truth that it claims to hold.

Paradoxically, neuronormativity creates a world devoid of context, where one can never actually satisfy the truth of the matter. All humans fall below standard to some extent. Of course, some of us have more privilege than others, but importantly, we are guided to always strive to achieve an inaccessible truth. Regardless of our contextual world.

The contextual nature of Autistic experience

Perhaps one of the most pervasive and harmful applications of neuronormativity’s erasure is within the lives of Autistic people. Autistic experience is highly contextual, with an infinite number of ways that people can respond to and understand it. Neuronormativity seeks to erase any context within the Autistic experience that positions our existence as something other than a problematised one.

Each Autistic performance creates a contextual world of meaning. What we summarise as shared experience is actually the liminal spaces where one person’s contextual world crosses into another. In this sense, each Autistic person represents a point within a rhizomatic network, from which shared context can become community. Neuronormativity seeks to reset those liminal spaces, and enforce a generalised context. Neuronormativity is the death of our reality.

Neuronormativity is the death of community.

David Gray-Hammond 0 Comments

Jul 12 2023

What is an Autistic advocate?

In the Autistic community, a common term we hear is “Autistic advocate”. The popular definition is a person using their lived experience to further the cause of Autistic rights and the wider neurodiversity movement. Despite this however, advocacy is a complicated and important role.

As an independent advocate, I utilise various different models of advocacy depending on what I am doing. The most common model, and the one that you will often see online through social media is community advocacy. Community advocacy requires us to work to represent the views and wishes of a wider community of people. A good example of this kind of advocacy is the Spectrum 10k campaign.

Members of the Boycott Spectrum 10k campaign engaged in community advocacy when writing the joint statement that was sent to the Health Research Authority. Community advocacy can often blend in with activism based approaches to enable wider change for an entire community of people.

There is also peer advocacy. This is the model of advocacy I use most commonly. This usually involves working with individuals as a member of their own peer group to represent their wishes, needs, and fight for the accommodations they require. This is an important type of advocacy for Autistic people who so often have to work with professionals who do not have lived experience that allows them to empathise fully with their clients.

Perhaps the most complicated but vital form of advocacy used in the UK is statutory advocacy. Two particularly relevant types of statutory advocates are Independent Mental Health Advocates (IMHA) and Independent Mental Capacity Advocates (IMCA). IMHAs work to ensure a person’s rights are fulfilled under the Mental Health Act (1983), while an IMCA fulfils the same role with regards to the Mental Capacity Act (2005).

These roles are important because they ensure that a person is not needlessly detained or deprived of their liberty.

There are many misconceptions about advocacy, but the biggest one is that as advocates, we speak on behalf of people. Advocacy built upon being another person’s voice is fundamentally flawed. As advocates, we should be empowering a person to communicate their views and wishes themselves, in whatever form of communication works best for them.

Another role for an advocate (particularly within the Autistic community) is to help contextualise a person’s experiences. When a person is having negative experiences, we can use our experience as an advocate to help them understand why that has happened and what they can do about it. In the Autistic community, much of our community advocacy is based on helping people understand their Autistic experiences in order to help them better advocate for themselves.

The ultimate goal of advocacy is to become redundant. Effective advocacy should empower its recipients to be able to advocate for themselves. So, while it may sound strange, our ultimate goal should be to not be needed.

Whatever form your advocacy takes, it is important to engage in reflective practice, and remember it is not your job to save people. An advocates role is to empower people to fight their own battles. Nothing will burn an advocate out quicker than joining the dysregulation of the people they are trying to help. We need to be the calm in what is often a tense situation.

Advocacy is an intense experience, but it is so very worth it. I look forward to seeing how the Autistic community’s advocacy circles evolve in the future and look to continue to evolve my own advocacy as ideas within the community shift and change.

David Gray-Hammond 0 Comments

May 2 2023

Neuroqueering education through rhizomatic community networks

This article exists, in part, thanks to the ongoing discussions in my Discord server. You can join by clicking here.

When considering the pervasiveness of neuronormativity, nowhere is it more visible and prevalent than in the education system. Educational institutions place a great deal of pressure on students to engage with behaviour policies, uniform policies, curriculums; more so, they define not only how one should learn, but how one should embody that learning and the ways we think about that learning.

Schools are, for the most part, completely ill-equipped for students who can’t conform to the restrictive ideals placed upon them by a school and institution that functions as a machine, creating apostles of our neoliberalist economy. Far too many children are traumatised and subsequently excluded from their human right to education because of the normatively violent approaches of the education system.

So how might we subvert and redesign education?

I have spoken recently of rhizomes. Vast networks of points that are connected while remaining independent of each other in terms of their survival. Such rhizomatic communities take a post-structural approach to the creation of community and the sharing of knowledge by ditching hierarchical notions of milestones and targets and instead allow us to take an interest-led approach.

Allowing communities to form around mutual interest creates different points within the rhizome. Through exploration and knowledge exchange, intrinsic connections form through the understanding that all knowledge is inherently connected. This is the basis of how one might queer the education system.

By allowing people to engage with interests and learn through that which they are intrinsically motivated to explore, the natural connections between points in the rhizome can be used to expand learning into other areas while maintaining and interest-led approach. Such a world would have no need for institutional education as knowledge creation and sharing would be a community endeavour.

Everyone would be the educator and the learner.

Some may worry about the standard of education that a person can achieve outside of the traditional institutional structure; truthfully, how much of the knowledge you hold now was attained within the walls of a school? Most learning is community based. School systems offer a very limited basis of knowledge that often seems pointless thanks to a lack of context.

Education should not be reliant on normative standards of teaching. We should be empowering each other to share the knowledge that we gain over a lifetime. Such a world would take us away from the self-reliance of our current society while allowing us to retain our individuality. Through a rhizomatic network of learning, we create a multiplicity in our individual existence that can not be achieved within the confines of the institution.

For access to bonus articles from David, check out David’s Divergent Discussions. Click here for 50% off your first year.

David Gray-Hammond 0 Comments

Apr 30 2023

Reclaiming Neurofuturism: Rhizomatic communities and the Chaotic Self

I have recently begun to explore the idea of the Autistic Rhizome as a futurist ideal of what the Autistic community could look like. In this concept, we explore communities that exist of networks with no single point of origin. They are interlinked but not dependent on one another for their existence.

You can read more about this here and here.

Co-existing with this idea is my concept of The Chaotic Self, which I first discussed in my book A Treatise on Chaos: Embracing the Chaotic Self and the art of neuroqueering. This idea position’s the Self as a fluid entity, constantly changing with each new interaction, making one’s identity as changeable as your hair colour.

What I would like to consider is the interplay between these two concepts.

If we consider the Autistic Rhizome, we are connected to one another either directly or indirectly. We are not independent of each other, but also do not rely on one another for our space in this rhizomatic network. What happens when we queer our neurology and alter our sense of Self?

As the Chaotic Self alters and grows, its relationship with the rest of the rhizome is altered. This affords it a different set of interactions and experiences, which in turn queers the Self further. Due to the interconnected nature of such a rhizomatic network, neuroqueer theory becomes farther reaching than ones own neurology. By queering ourselves, we are queering entire sections of humanity.

One could assume that at a certain degree of separation within the network, our reach is stifled, but as we queer ourselves, the relational change with our immediate environment transfers the process onwards to the rest of our community in somewhat of an u predictable manner.

Perhaps then, the argument could be made that if we want to alter society, we must first alter ourselves. When Walker (2021) tells us to “throw away the masters tools”, we must realise that we are the masters tools. Society has made us complicit in our own imprisonment. To throw away the tools means queering ourselves on a fundamental level. We must become different on an individual level and, in turn, alter the world around us.

As such, to embrace the Chaotic Self requires us to embrace the rhizome. We must recognise that any change to our own embodiment and subsequent relationship with the environment alters more than our inner world, it has knock on effects for the human collective, that itself is an ever-changing, amorphous entity.

Further Reading

Neuroqueer Heresies by Nick Walker

A Treatise on Chaos by David Gray-Hammond

I also recommend becoming familiar with the work of Delueze and Guattari for a broader understanding of some of the motivations behind this post.

David Gray-Hammond 1 Comments

Apr 21 2023

Neuro-anarchy and the rise of the Autistic Rhizome

Before we start, I want to go over some terms that will be covered here.

Neuro-anarchy: as conceptualised by Katie Munday, I use this to refer to to the decentralisation of hierarchy as it pertains to neurocultures such as that of the Autistic community. Munday and I co-authored an article on this here. Neuro-anarchists arrive at this position by existing on the fringes of their own communities and challenging the politics within them.

Rhizome: as conceptualised in the work of Deleuze and Guatarri. A network with no single point of origin. No part of the network depends upon the existence of another. I have introduced the idea of this in the context of community here.

When considering the nature of the neuro-anarchist, one could be forgiven for expecting to see Autistic people clad in post-apocalyptic garments decrying the existence of government. Some of us are like that. However, some of us look like this;

Image of David. A white, Mediterranean, masculine person with a shaved head, thick rimmed glasses, lip piercing, and an ear tunnel. David is wearing a waistcoat, white shirt, and tie. He is sat at a covered picnic table.

Neuro-anarchy as a concept is important. In any community built upon identity, identity politics come into play. Humans have this bizarre tendency to look for leadership, and when they find it, they will often defend it, even if it is overtly harmful. Neuro-anarchy, however, invites us to consider the nature of that leadership and whether the hierarchy of our own communities serves the greater good.

Allow me to elaborate.

Humans are fundamentally neutral. We are equally as capable of tremendous evil as we are of a beautiful good. We are not born naturally good or evil. That is an identity given to us by the sum of our actions. However, the tendency to create community hierarchy means that some members of the community sit in a position of power over others.

Neuro-anarchy seeks to rebalance the power dynamics of a given neuroculture, allowing for mutual exchange of knowledge and support.

Enter the rhizome.

On discord, there is a growing network of communities. I have lovingly dubbed this collective The Autistic Rhizome. They are an interconnected network of knowledge exchange, and mutual aid and support that have displaced the hierarchical nature of advocate/follower relationships.

We are equal in these spaces.

This doesn’t mean that all knowledge shared is useful in advancing the neurodiversity movement. Like any knowledge, some is good, some is bad, most is somewhere in the middle.

This growing network consists of communities that do not depend on each other to exist, but are still enriched by their interconnection. There is no starting or end point. There is no advancing through communities based on levels of knowledge. They just simply exist, and people come and go as they please.

I personally feel this is neuro-anarchy on action. We have decentralised the Self and become a collective. We are connected in the neutrality of our individuality.

There is somewhat of a liberated feeling within the Rhizome. It feels safe.

I strongly believe this might be the next step for growing our communities. A rhizomatic network of free thought that considers each member equal. The ethos of “do no harm” is a wonderful thing.

If you want to check out the Autistic Rhizome, you can join my server and no doubt explore into others!

Don’t forget you can support David’s work by purchasing a subscription to his Substack and purchasing his books.

David Gray-Hammond 6 Comments

Apr 14 2023

Reclaiming Neurofuturism: Are neurodivergent communities in danger of separatism?

I have been active in the Autistic community now for over half of the past decade. Still, when we consider some of the greatest thought leaders within our community, I am aware that my time is a drop in the ocean. However, in my time I have seen a growing trend towards inadvertent separation from wider society culminating towards what can only be viewed as a sort of self-imposed segregation.

This is dangerous.

I’ll be honest, I can count the number of non-Autistic people I interact with regularly on one hand. Almost all of the people in my life are Autistic, and most of them are part of the wider online communities I exist within. This has been important for mitigating my sense of isolation and alienation from the world, but perhaps it has an echo chamber effect, which limits my access to ideas and knowledge.

Knowledge is power, and that power is largely controlled by neurotypically performing agents. However, we need to consider the power that is wielded within our own communities. There are distinct do and don’t rules that by the sum of their parts have become identity politics. What has started out as a means of liberation and protection from harm has become at risk of harming the community itself.

This doesn’t mean that communities shouldn’t have rules. There are people and attitudes in our world that are overtly harmful. Normative violence is insidious in the way it indoctrinates us into believing things about ourselves and others. What we must be aware of is the policing of thoughts and knowledge production.

The Autistic community especially has become so attached to certain ideas presented in certain formats that we often see the same concepts packaged and repackaged, lauded as new knowledge when in fact they are thoughts that were explored at the inception of our community back in the days of dial up internet.

What we need are thought leaders who are willing to take risks, explore new avenues, and build upon the foundational knowledge that those who came before us provided. Yes, sometimes we will get it wrong, but overall, we need to sometimes come up with the wrong answer. It is better to produce a falsehood if that falsehood brings us closer to the truth of the matter (if such a thing as objective truth even applies here).

We need to understand that the knowledge that exists within our communities is helpful, but not nearly the whole picture. In separating ourselves from those who might challenge that knowledge, we risk the opportunity for growth. Only through challenging our own ideas can we build upon the knowledge that exists.

This is the danger of separatism. It is the antithesis to evolution. We must liberate neurodivergent people fully into the world and not into a bubble that is curated to never challenge them. Only through trial and tribulation can we grow the knowledge that we need to truly free ourselves from oppression.

David Gray-Hammond 1 Comments

Oct 23 2022

Social constructivism and the making of ethical decisions in Autistic lives

TRIGGER WARNING: Mention of Do Not Resuscitate directives and the pandemic

Autistic people are subject to countless rules that are seemingly arbitrary in nature while having a huge impact on our wellbeing. It has been a source of much contention in our relationships with the non-Autistic people in our lives; and our questioning of these rules is used to label us as disordered and defective in a neuronormative society. When it comes to ethical decision making, I believe that Autistic people have a unique insight into the current state of society thanks to the recognition of the arbitrary nature of normative morality.

In the Autistic community, ethics and morality are based on community consensus, rather than the word of an individual or limited group. While we have no laws to recognise, I should at this point acknowledge that there are unwritten rules (although increasingly they are being written down through self-exploration in the form of writing). The ethics of our current unwritten rules are a further conversation to be had.

What I find particularly interesting is that the Autistic community takes a social constructivist approach to ethics and morality. We acknowledge the existence of normative social rules, but write our own based on the knowledge generated within our community. This has pro’s and con’s; the discourse in the Autistic community is dominated by privilege, I should acknowledge that I am far from the only cis-gendered white male to be publishing his opinion in this community.

Despite this, Autistic people seem to be in a unique position to recognise that ‘one-size-fits-all’ approaches to morality tend to fail marginalised groups. It could be argued that we recognise this due to our own marginalised status, but also because we have a strong sense of justice.

What is important about social constructivism is that it recognises that all ethics and morality is subjective. What is just and fair to one individual or group may infringe upon the rights of another. A good example of this was the implementation of ‘Do Not Attempt Resuscitation’ directives imposed upon the disabled during the pandemic. While it allowed for more resources to be freed up in medical settings, it was a direct middle finger to our communities right to life.

This is one of the biggest issues in socially constructed morality and ethics. Different people have different privileges, and we have been effectively taught that “more rights for the marginalised means less for the privileged”. This is abjectly incorrect; it is inconsequential to the privileged if the marginalised are treated equitably, they will still retain their rights.

Thus we have to recognise that morality in our own community is not an objective truth. There are many things that are considered morally right by consensus, that still fail to ensure the protection of marginalised rights. Many of us do not have Autistic as our only marginalised identity. The vast majority of us are in fact multiply marginalised.

We must identify how the subjectivity of our community ethics ignore the privileges that give rise to them. Until we do this, there will be imbalance in the ethics of the Autistic community.

David Gray-Hammond 1 Comments

Jul 10 2022

Back to the corner: Psychoactive drug use, my Autistic experience

Some 4(ish) years ago, my debut blog post on this website was Standing on the corner: Where autism and addiction meet shortly covered by Recovery services as an Autistic adult. Back then My writing was merely an attempt to scream into the void, offloading my frustrations. Little did i know that in 4 years, my articles would have garnered over 25,000 views, and that people would ask me to go places and do things. I was also pretty surprised to discover that for the most part I don’t mind going places and doing things.

With that in mind, I decided it’s time to take another crack at this one, seeing if 4 years of experience makes for an improved experience for you, my wonderful readers and followers.

So here we are.

I’m David. Born Autistic at the dawn of the 1990’s. My life was pretty standard for what you’d expect of a truamatised, psychotic, recovering addict. So let’s consider where this particular part of my journey started.

October 2008.

My long term relationship came to an end (mutually, but still painful none-the-less). On that very same day, I had a peculiar experience. I heard a number of voices calling my name, but it seemed that it wasn’t the people around me that were doing so. Interestingly, this was the day of my first ever cigarette as well. Hindsight tells me that the fact that my first cigarette led to me smoking an entire pack in a number of hours should have been a huge warning for what was coming. Sadly, hindsight isn’t good for much, and I have a traumatised AuDHD brain that at the time was going through what some might term a “prodromal phase” for the psychotic condition I would later be diagnosed with.

Over the next week I discovered that smoking cannabis really helped my growing paranoia and auditory disturbances chill the f*ck out, and that when drank a litre of vodka, I just didn’t give a sh*t. Just a note here for anyone who can’t see what’s coming; drug-use and trauma is a volatile mix. Some people use psychoactives safely and medicinally their whole lives, with no real negative outcomes. I on the other hand came to resemble one of those warning videos your school would have shown you about the dangers of peer pressure and drug-use.

So, naturally I did what any normal AuDHD’er would do when they discovered something that makes them feel good. I did it again. And again, and again, ad infinitum. Each time I used, my consumption grew. Each new environment I entered I would break down another boundary in my life. First it was cannabis, then alcohol, and I figured that since these two weren’t the dangerous and hellish things my school had made them out to be, perhaps other psychoactives would be okay as well. Side note: this is why using scare tactics and abstinence based approached to stop young people from getting high is f*cking irresponsible, because when they find out they’ve been lied to, they don’t truat you on ANYTHING.

My time at university can be summed up by quoting myself “I don’t think you’ve ever seen me this high, have you?” and the phrase said to me most often “How the f*ck are you still alive?”. You see, I hadn’t noticed it, but I was taking drugs by the shed load. I was out of my mind on pretty much anything I could get. It’s easier to list the drugs I haven’t used than the drugs I have used; To date, I’ve never used “street” heroin, or crack cocaine. More on this in a moment.

What this meant was that when I ran away from my environment, making the 300 mile journey back to my mother’s house, I swore I would never use again. After all, I had nearly died on a couple of occasions, and found myself on the radar of what one might describe as “less than savoury people”.

Addiction advocacy and the inspiration paradox: A reflection at 6 years sober

Today I am 6 years sober from addiction. During those six years I have learnt many lessons, but in this reflection I would like to consider something that has played on my mind for the past three years of my advocacy work.

Inspiration.

While not overtly a bad thing, it is often misused to infantilise and minimise the achievements of disabled people while hiding behind a mask of feigned respect. This phenomenon is known as “inspiration porn”.

A good (hypothetical) example of such a thing would be a video of a disabled person doing something completely mundane, like dancing, but they would be dancing with a non-disabled person. The video would centre the non-disabled as some kind of saviour to the disabled person for doing something as basic as treating them like a human being. The implication of the video, albeit in subtext, would be “Look at the amazing things that disabled people can achieve when an abled person rescues them from their shameful existence”.

It’s dehumanising and wrong.

So, addiction advocacy.

As a recovering addict in the public eye, I do what I do because I want to help others overcome similar challenges to my own, and help reduce their suffering. This does in fact require inspiring people. If it weren’t for the sober addict who showed me kindness during my first stretch on a psychiatric ward, I might not have chosen recovery.

The fact that they had turned their life around, and become someone I wanted to look up to was inspiring, and that isn’t a bad thing.

What would be bad would be if people like myself are allowed to become another source of inspiration porn. It’s a difficult line to walk. I want people to have what I have found, not get off on the tragedies that have formed who I am.

Contrary to popular belief, addicts are people. We are not burdens, we don’t deserve our suffering. Regardless of whether or not we are in recovery, we deserve food, housing, health care, support, and kindness.

This is what I want to inspire in people.

So please, don’t look at me and think it’s a miracle that I recovered. My recovery shouldn’t be the inspiration. I was privileged to have a loving and supportive set of family and friends. I had good key workers (although the services they came from were woefully ill-equipped). I was in a place where I was ready to enter recovery.

What I want to inspire in you is the idea that all addicts deserve recovery. I want to inspire you to challenge the systems that keep people like me trapped in a world of suffering.

I want you to know that those with less privilege than myself need us to get in the trenches and help them fight this war.

If that is what I inspire in people, then I am happy with what I am doing. If, however, you look at me and see a walking miracle, then I have not gone far enough.

The tragedies and traumas of my life should not be celebrated. They should be wielded as weapons to dismantle the masters house, and rebuild it into something where we can all coexist and thrive.

David Gray-Hammond 0 Comments

Jan 14 2022

Autistic community, identity, and the sense of self

During my years of active addiction, I had no concept of who I was beyond being a drug and alcohol user. For this reason, I felt trapped into my substance use, unable to escape the horror that I was habitually inflicting upon myself. I finally found sobriety, but was clinging on desperately.

That’s when it happened.

A team of neurodevelopmental psychologists conducted an extensive assessment and told me I was Autistic. I will admit that to begin with I didn’t know what to make of it. Was this the reason for my suffering? Could I make the memory of my darker years disappear if it were removed?

I won’t say I am ashamed, I was suffering, but I’m not proud to admit that there was a time when I may well have taken a “cure” had it been scientifically tested and offered to me.

Then I found a community.

This community was a strange place, because I no longer felt like an outsider. The experiences they described and the feelings they expressed were like the sweetest song lyrics, gently soothing my Autistic soul. These people knew me. They were me. I was no longer adrift in the world.

That community was the Autistic community.

I was learning more and more every day. I can’t mark the exact moment when it happened, but suddenly I had a real identity. As my engagement with that community grew, so too did my sense of self.

No longer was I David the drug user. I was David the writer, David the advocate, David the activist.

Presenter, host, speaker, consultant, trainer. The list simply grew.

I saw the imperfections of the community and felt it to be a beautiful melody. They were as imperfect as me, and they did not hide it. They seemed more human to me than those who had called me an alien.

This community. This beautiful, imperfect community, had saved my life. So now my work commenced to return the favour. I looked around and realised that the suffering I had once experienced, that all of us had experienced, had nothing to do with my Autistic mind. The problem was a cruel and indifferent society.

I set out to help my neurokin, one person at a time.

Thus, a new David had emerged from the ashes of his former life. Finding the Autistic community didn’t just give me a new identity, it fundamentally altered my sense of self. It gave me purpose and focus where before there had been none.

I can never be sure of whether or not my debt to this community has been repaid. Not that I particularly care. I adore this community, and will fight for it for as long as I draw breath.

Thanks to this community, I know myself, and that is a thing that is priceless.

David Gray-Hammond 0 Comments

Creating Autistic Suffering: Interoceptive stimming or “challenging behaviour”?

TW: Discusses Challenging Behaviour, Disordered Eating, Sex and Related Activities, Self-Injury, and Victimisation Recently David posted an infographic about interoceptive stimming. This proved to be a very popular topic and we felt it necessary to expand on this more via this series. In our experience working directly with Autistic individuals experiencing various levels of distress and crisis, what is often conceptualised as "behavioural" can be attributed to interoceptive self-stimulation.

Tag Archives: community

The creation of worlds

Neuronormativity and the elimination of context

The contextual nature of Autistic experience