Neuroqueering disability studies: tracing a few déjà vus

David Ben Shannon

Chapter 7 in Disability in a Turbulent Era, 2026, pp 85-98 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Neuroqueering explores how thinking and behaving differently questions medicalised perspectives on neurodivergence and societal expectations of “normal”. In this chapter, I argue that neuroqueering is less about offering a wholly new theory and more about gathering familiar concepts and experiences into a turbulent, generative, and irreconcilably frictional space. I frame neuroqueering as a kind of déjà vu, drawn from familiar ideas yet strangely new. I offer three interrelated strategies for activating this sense of déjà vu: (1) (Dis)identification (questioning normal). I explore how the idea of neurodiversity can end up reinforcing particular versions of “normal” or neurotypicality. In contrast, neuroqueering refuses to be included, inviting us to reinvent the thing being included in. (2) (Anti)essentialism (challenging fixed categories). I explore how neuroqueering works because of the paradox that we sometimes need to name and individualise categories to undo them: specifically, the queer, the neurodivergent, and the individual human being. (3) (De)familiarisation (making the familiar strange). I illustrate how neuroqueering invites us to approach familiar categories and concepts from a new perspective. I suggest that the word “neuroqueering” itself invites this kind of thinking, differing from related concepts such as crip theory. In conclusion, I suggest that neuroqueering is a practice of refusal and reimagining, rather than a stable theory. It doesn’t give us a neat new concept but instead helps us to work out irreconcilable tensions: (1) resisting pressures to conform, by (2) breaking open fixed categories, in ways that enable us (3) to re-encounter the familiar in new ways.

Keywords: Neuroqueer; Queer; Neurodivergence; Disidentification; Defamiliarisation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781035347247
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