Neurodiversity, Responsibility and Justice

• In Event: Changing Perspective: Through the Lens of Disabiity

Abstract

In the past several decades, political theorists and philosophers have begun to consider the special obligations and challenges that disability poses for justice (Kittay 1998, Nussbaum 2007). We have also become more critical of the ways in which difference is often portrayed as a clinical deficiency (Foucault 1961). But it is one thing to reject the pathological portrayal of homosexuality or transgender identity, and quite another to reject the pathologizing of developmental disabilities, which seem, on some accounts, more obviously debilitating.

But this is precisely what many disability activists demand. For instance, many autism activists demand recognition of the autistic community as one of many “neurotribes” which possess different but equally valuable cognitive traits (Silberman 2016). Many autistic adults resent the Applied Behavioral Analysis therapy (ABA) they received as children, which sought to “normalize” their behavior, rather than designing institutions which could accommodate their neurodivergence (see neurocosmopolitanism.com). Ultimately, they urge us to flip the narrative – rather than viewing disabled individuals as deficient, we should critique the society and institutions that fail to include them.

Developmental and cognitive disabilities are often accompanied by behavioral challenges that may make individuals seem rude or disruptive. Parents of developmentally disabled children face criticism when they cannot control their children’s outbursts in public. But the criticism cools when observers learn that a disability at work. Surely we cannot hold individuals responsible for things over which they have no control. In this narrative, autistic children lack self-control that others possess; the salient factor here is, again, deficiency.

This perspective is challenged, to some degree, by ABA practitioners who contend that autistic children can learn to control their behavior and develop socially adaptive behaviors, when they are given sufficient (dis)incentives. Accordingly, autistic children are impaired and we must cultivate their personal responsibility through therapeutic intervention, until they come as close as they can to the level of responsibility exhibited by neurotypical individuals.

This narrative can be flipped, too. It is not that “they” (the disabled) are not enough like “us”; rather, it is that “we” do not recognize how much like “them” we already are. Disability and neurodivergence shine a spotlight on the limitations of individual responsibility as a normative concept. The ability to control our behavior, our choices, and our preferences is exceedingly variable but never as total as we may like to think, and never outside the environment which helps or hinders us. This is the insight of many feminists (who were, unsurprisingly, among the first to attend to disability in their theories), who posit a relational view of autonomy in which we raise each other up by demanding institutions and social conditions which allow all of us to exert maximum control over our lives (MacKenzie and Stoljar 2007). Those who appear most in control enjoy congruence with their environment. Those who appear least in control suffer from a mismatch, and from widespread efforts to place empirical if not moral blame on their failure to thrive in an environment they did not choose.

The concept of the natural lottery seeks to diffuse the moral valence which often attends socially maladaptive traits: one does not choose to be lazy or incompetent, for instance (Anderson 1999, Arneson 1989, Rawls 1971, Reamer 1983). This is not wrong, but it is not enough to see the distribution of traits as a matter of good or bad luck. An important if not key facet of luck is whether or not one is born into a society which can reasonably accommodate one’s traits. An autistic child born today is lucky to have available to them (distributive issues not withstanding) a number of therapies that may facilitate more meaningful communication, for instance; this is surely better than the institutionalization they might have faced fifty years ago. But as long as the institutional milieu continues to see neurodivergence as a deficit, they are not as lucky as they might be under different, more inclusive circumstances. For instance, social norms and educational practices could accommodate stimming (comforting repetitive motions), rather than training children to control it.

ABA therapists are right to recognize the degree to which we can shape each other through our interactions and interventions. But the trauma reported by many adults who underwent ABA as children is a powerful reminder that our shared responsibility for each is, indeed, a serious responsibility to recognize others on their own terms and to do what we can to help each other thrive without demanding neuro-conformity along the way.

Author

• Olivia Newman, Rider University