A neurocosmopolitan individual accepts and welcomes neurocognitive differences in experience, communication, and embodiment in the same sort of enlightened way that a cosmopolitan individual accepts and welcomes cultural differences in dining habits. In a future society that's truly embraced the neurodiversity paradigm, neurocosmopolitanism would be the prevailing attitude toward neurocognitive differences among humans.

Really? So human brains and minds don’t differ from one another? There’s an awful lot of scientific evidence that shows quite plainly that there’s considerable variation among human brains. And if we all thought alike, the world would be a very different place indeed. The person who wrote this sentence was probably trying to object to the neurodiversity paradigm and/or the positions of the Neurodiversity Movement, and has ended up sounding rather silly as a result of failing to distinguish between these things and the phenomenon of neurodiversity itself.

What It Means:

Shannon, D.B. (2023) ' ‘Trajectories matter’: affect, neuroqueerness and music research-creation in an early childhood classroom.' Qualitative Inquiry, 29(1) pp. 200-211. So one crucial first step is for all of us to engage our creativity and awaken our sense of the possible, and start generating individual and collective visions of neurocosmopolitan futures that inspire us. In addition to being thoroughly neuroqueer, these fabulous books are also gripping space opera tales grounded in the best classic sci-fi traditions. Hoffmann has also produced a lot of extraordinarily good and thoroughly neuroqueer short stories and poetry, much of which can be found in the collection Monsters in My Mind. A lot of work on neurodiversity has been strongly informed by the lens of disability studies. This work is necessary and important, but I think some people fall into the trap of thinking that the disability studies lens is the only useful way to think about neurodiversity.

Just as a cosmopolitan perspective recognizes that there’s no “normal,” “superior,” or “default” culture or ethnicity, a neurocosmopolitan perspective––or a neurocosmopolitan society––is one in which no sort of mind is privileged as “normal,” or as superior to others, or as the natural default way for a mind to be. Many of the stereotypes I have to contend with as a person with ADHD are identical to those I have to contend with as a bisexual woman‚ namely that I’m ‘flighty’ and ‘afraid of commitment.’ I believe the true antidote to these unkind stereotypes is education, education, and more education. Within LGBT spaces, I’d love to see greater consideration given to those of us with sensory processing and integration issues.” — An ADDitude Reader Shannon, D. B., and Truman, S. E. (January 2024). Cosmic Beavers: Queer counter-mythologies and the practice of research-creation. European Congress of Qualitative Inquiry (ECQI). Helsinki, Finland.First, need to be absolutely clear—in our own minds and in our written and spoken discourse—that the pathology paradigm is nothing more than institutionalized bigotry masquerading as science, and that it's illegitimate and harmful in the same ways as racism, misogyny, and other forms of bigotry that have also historically masqueraded as science. Dr. Raymaker: Are there any people right now who you feel are taking neurodiversity scholarship to this next level, or bringing it into the future in interesting or innovative new ways? What are they bringing to the discourse? To come the the point, then: neuroqueer theory is what emerges when one takes an approach to the topic of neurodiversity that’s based largely in the fields of queer theory and somatic psychology. Another term you use a lot is “neurocosmopolitan” or “neurocosmopolitanism.” Where does neuroqueer theory fit into a neurocosmopolitan world? In recent years a new paradigm has begun to emerge, which I refer to as the neurodiversity paradigm. The term neurodiversity , coined in the 1990s, refers to the diversity of human minds—the variations in neurocognitive functioning that manifest within the human species. Within the neurodiversity paradigm, neurodiversity is understood to be a form of human diversity that is subject to social dynamics—including the dynamics of oppression and systemic social power inequalities—similar to those dynamics that commonly occur around other forms of human diversity such as racial diversity or diversity of gender and sexual orientation.

It’s an useful term given that, along the spectrum we have more LGTBQIA+ people around in terms of percentage. Truman, S. E. and Shannon, D. B. (December 2019). Luring Feeling: Composing with public’s affective milieu. Cultural Studies Association of Australia (CSAA). Brisbane, Queensland , Australia.In terms of grounding biomedical research in the neurodiversity paradigm, the MAPS study was exemplary in a few ways. First, there was nothing about it that pathologized autistic people or that framed autism as inferior to neurotypicality. It wasn't in any way about “treating autism” (an innately oppressive concept that's central to the pathology paradigm); it was about treating social anxiety in consenting autistic adults who wanted their social anxiety treated because it was diminishing their quality of life (and importantly, it was diminishing their quality of life according to their own assessment, rather than according to some neurotypical's opinion of what a high quality of life should look like). Shannon, D. B. (June 2022). Reciprocity as semiosis: Thinking literacy beyond meaning in ‘Intensive Interactions’. Reconceptualizing Early Childhood Education. By being aware of your neurodivergent identity and your queer identity, and recognizing that they interact, you have successfully neuroqueered. Considering how your other identities, such as race, socioeconomic class, ethnicity, ect., interact with your neurodivergence and your queerness is also neuroqueering. I mention in the book that I originally came up with the term neuroqueer in early 2008, in a paper I wrote for Dr. Ian J. Grand’s Psychodynamics class in the Somatic Psychology graduate program at California Institute of Integral Studies.