Preface
"In recent years, the increasing awareness of the term neurodiverse has increased dramatically, the term, used to describe an individual whose brain chemistry lies outside the standard deviation of the general population resulting in an infinitely diverse spectrum of symptoms that are often grouped together into labelled and categorised disorders or conditions. These can range from many diagnosis’ such as Dyslexia or Dyspraxia through to Tourette’s and ADHD, in my case it happens to be Asperger’s syndrome. A now retired term used to describe an individual sitting on the autistic spectrum wavelength of neurodiversity, Asperger’s was commonly described as a form of ‘high functioning’ autism characterised by intense interests, difficulty reading and interpreting social interaction (both verbal and non-verbal), and a predisposition towards repetitive behaviours and routines, but without the learning difficulties often associated with other forms of autism.
The term neurodiversity does not only cover the physiological nature of these conditions but also the social and political aspects of these conditions. The term was only conceived as recently as 1998 by sociologist Judy Singer and as such is still seen as being somewhat in its infancy but has been gaining traction nonetheless, in particular, the term is very popular with people within the neurodiverse community as it challenges the predominant notion that people who live with these conditions are pathologically disabled and as such are treated by society as having something ‘wrong’ with them rather than just having a different methodology to the lived experience than that of neurotypical people. The term is also seen as an expansion of the social model of disability that highlights and challenges systemic barriers, derogatory attitudes and social exclusion that many argue are what actually form the basis of disability rather than the symptoms that may present with various conditions.
The aim of this book is to begin to question, challenge and invite discussion surrounding the current neurotypical structures that dominate the lived experience of neurodiversity, of which includes the use of neurotypical methods to describe, express, and categorise aspects of neurodiverse existence that often cannot fully encompass the intricacies, and complexity of feeling and emotion when they occur within a brain that processes information and the subsequent output in ways that diverge from the mainstream, specifically in the case of this project, a brain on the autistic spectrum. Often there are facets of the lived experience of my neurodiversity that are hard to summarise and put into words, to me I find often that there are too many associations and connotations found within the neurotypical standard of the spoken or written word that can often skew or distract from what I’m trying to express, often in ways that can even feel deprecating towards aspects of myself that are intrinsically linked to my neurodiversity.
To do this, the images found in this book have been made in such a way as to reverse the usual methods of reading and analysing images as a way of representing the expectation put on neurodiverse individuals when it comes to reading and analysing social languages. For the vast majority of neurotypical individuals, socialising comes naturally and flows on an almost autonomous level, for the vast majority of autistic neurodiverse individuals however, it does not, instead each and every aspect of almost every social interaction has to be intensely analysed, assessed, evaluated and taken into account in order to respond in a manner that follows neurotypical convention. Needless to say, this process is incredibly taxing and certainly contributes to some of the more negative, and distressing, aspects of neurodiverse living.
The expectation therefore, with this book is that those from a more neurotypical disposition have an opportunity to experience and reflect on the ways in which a neurodiverse individual might be expected to process and engage with social languages by experiencing that same disconnect from input to output, to have to take a moment, or longer, to analyse, assess, decipher, and process each of these images in order to come away with an individual interpretation of what the image might be saying. It is not surprising therefore that when these images have been shared and discussed with other neurodiverse individuals that interpretations and readings come far more naturally, and that their responses to the images fall far more within the spectrum that these images are made to express, that being the lived experience and associated challenges of neurodiversity ranging from anxiety, doubt and hyperawareness through to isolation, the disruption to day to day living, and the sensations that follow inhabiting space outside the boundaries of neurologically conventional society. "
Once this was completed, I then added it into my design for the book and arranged the text so it would sit aesthetically and in a good order with no paragraphs being broken up across pages or sections. With a page to spare from my allotted 4, I used it to put in a leaf page, breaking up the introduction and preface from the plates.
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