"Atopos: Neurodiversity & the Power of Participatory Sense-Making"

Few conversations have been as illustrative as this one of the proximity between participatory sense-making as a theory and participatory sense-making as a veritable way of moving through the world. In this episode, we hear from Allison Leigh Holt, Jonny Drury, and Dr Hanne De Jaegher about thinking divergently, and feeling oneself to be 'atopos' in a world where the neuronormative claims on the mind and body are ceaseless, fraught, and very often alienating. Addressing many of the subtleties of naming and normative categorisation, the conversation echoed concerns that are fundamental to participatory sense-making and enactive thinking, where we must navigate the tension of simultaneously being bound by language and transgressing it, of moving through it and being moved by it. It was a living testament to the great ingenuity that is born of difference, and a robust embodiment of the joyful resistance and lateral imagination that are often called upon to participate in the world from a marginalised perspective. 

Some references mentioned during the conversation:

David Bohm’s approach to dialogue

Dr Hanne De Jaegher’s website, including her two excellent papers integrating autism and the enactive approach 

Allison Leigh Holt’s website 

Jonny Drury's Dialogica website, and a link to his forthcoming book, The Autism Dialogue Approach Handbook: Transforming Communication in Neurodiversity (Routledge, 2025)

Article on “atopos” by Jonny Drury

***

Please follow our work and consider donating to Mind & Life Europe or joining our MLE Friends community!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.