Authors:

• Margaret F. Gibson, Renison University College at the University of Waterloo
• Patty Douglas, Brandon University

What are we to make of neurodiversity discourse, both in its activist origins and its more recent expansions into the mainstream? Drawing upon blogs, research articles, and popular media, and engaging with critiques from feminist science and technology/disability studies, this paper considers how neurodiversity arguments for a re-valuation of autism and other forms of human variation rub against “expert” discourses. Neurodiversity discourse deploys brain-based arguments to advocate social change, in explicit contra-distinction from neo-liberal invocations of “neuroplasticity”. However, as more people take up neurodiversity language, struggles continue over what knowledge and practice neurodiversity should encompass, and whose expertise “counts”.