Anthropology and Neurodissidence: Traces from the Cracks of Discomfort

https://doi.org/10.25058/20112742.n57.07

Berenice Vargas García
Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana-Iztapalapa, México

Abstract:

This article presents several inquiries into the relationship between anthropology and neurodivergence from an auto(auti)ethnographic, embodied, and situated perspective. Drawing on a series of escrivivencias (writing-living narratives) from anthropology students in Mexico, we problematize the neuronormative, ableist, and sanist ideals that shape anthropological and ethnographic training. The analysis weaves together insights from critical disability, madness, and neurodivergence studies, along with feminist epistemologies, and Global South posthumanisms to explore the onto-epistemic and affective potentials of neurodissident becoming. The article suggests the possibility of an embodied, disabled, counter-ableist and anti-sanist anthropology that recognizes the legitimacy and epistemic and material power of dissident body-minds.

Keywords: neurodivergence, ableism, sanism, feminist epistemologies, embodied anthropology.