I got to talk to neurodivergent philosopher Robert Chapman about their new book Empire of Normality, which explains how norms of brain functioning got baked into our economic system. We talk about how a focus on individual rights and superpowers can only get neurodivergent people so far, why the line between neurodivergent and neurotypical is more squishy than you think, and how anti-psychiatry was actually good for capitalists, pretty bad for disabled people!
We also discuss a materialist view of the rising ADHD and autism diagnosis rates everyone seems to be panicking about, how we might view these categories as real without reducing them to brain scans and synapses, and why executive dysfunction might just be the disability of our age.
[Episode Transcript]
NOTES:
* Get Empire of Normality from Pluto Press
* Follow Robert on Twitter @DrRJChapman or read their blog CriticalNeurodiversity.com
* For an explainer on the pathology paradigm, see Nick Walker’s work
* Here’s the blog post on executive function as ideology that I bring up
* More stuff I wrote about the ADHD workshop in DC
* SPK stands for Socialist Patients’ Collective, they were a radical group of psychiatric patients in 1970’s West Germany who wrote a manifesto called Turn Illness Into a Weapon
* The books Robert lists as influences at the end are: The Politics of Disablement, Health Communism, Caliban and the Witch, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, A Very Capitalist Condition
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