Neurodiverse lives

Neurodiversity names the move from the problematisation of neurological difference as deficiency in a person to the affirmation of the inherent and inseparable existence of neurodivergent realities. This chapter teases out how a broad variety of neurodiverse experiences and performances can be understood through a cultural geographical lens and, vice versa, how neurodiverging spatialities inform and challenge cultural geographical understandings of subjectivity and body-world relations. It explores vital frictions, abrasive moments, and fiery joys that make up the everyday lives of folks with the extraordinary sensory, perceptive, and social experiences associated with autism, ADHD, Tourette's, OCD, and agoraphobia amongst others. Rather than approaching neurodiverse lives through the prism of normalcy, normativity, and difference, the chapter reflects on the reductions and limitations of neurotypicality. A neurodiverse cultural geography could embrace new spatial structuring intensities across human and nonhuman phenomena to better understand the formation of neurodivergent lifeworlds as emergent with multiple cultures and cultural ecologies.