Critical Neurodivergent Studies (CNS) is a framework for studying how neurotypicality operates as an unmarked norm, and how that norm produces and disciplines neurodivergent people.
Neurotypicality is rarely named, yet it shapes how knowledge is produced, how social life and institutions are organised, who counts as a legal person, what cultural forms look like, and how scholarship itself is done. CNS makes that norm visible so it can be examined.
Where it sits
CNS is in conversation with the neurodiversity paradigm, critical disability studies and mad studies, and is not a subcategory of any of them. From the neurodiversity paradigm it takes the recognition that there is no normal brain. From critical disability studies it takes the insight that institutions discipline minds as well as bodies.
Using this site
The Taxonomy of Terms is the place of record for CNS vocabulary. Each term has its own page with a definition, a provenance line and a citation. The Projects and Papers pages list work in progress and work in print.
This blog will carry notes on terms as they develop, new publications, calls for papers and news from the Neurodivergent Creative Methods Lab. If you are working with CNS and would like your work listed, the contact details are on the Methods and the Lab page.
