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Everybody should read Robert Chapman’s groundbreaking critique of neurocapitalism, Empire of Normality: Neurodiversity and Capitalism. This book fills a gaping hole in the literature by explaining the relationship between neurodiversity and capital from past to present.
In my symposium contribution, I want to reiterate key parts of Chapman’s analysis, adding some of my own thoughts, after which I will attempt to explain why this analysis has been omitted from professional philosophy for so long, taking inspiration from Chapman’s book.
To preface, part of the answer to the question, “why is this analysis so long overdue?” has to do with the way analytic philosophy has been done for so long, especially in the fields of ethics and politics. (I am referring specifically to Anglo-American analytic philosophy from the Global North). In Black Rights/White Wrongs, Charles Mills asked, after explaining the standard analytic method, “How in God’s name could anybody think that this is the appropriate way to do ethics?” (Mills 2017, 77). He was referring to the standard practice of ignoring and omitting structural injustices from the historical record, producing a “feel-good history for whites” (65), and, in the same stroke, burnishing the reputations of white supremacists, exalting them as icons of wisdom and progress.
Prominent philosophers who were instrumental to the slave trade and global eugenics have been depicted as luminaries and progressives, despite their main contribution to society being structural racism. Kant, for instance, is remembered as the inventor of the categorical imperative rather than, in Mills’ words, “the founder of modern ‘scientific’ racism,” while Locke’s “investment in African slavery” and “justify[cation] of [Indigenous] appropriation” has been widely overlooked (2017, xvii). Analytic philosophers, in other words, have conspired to sanitize the history of philosophy, making it seem more idealistic and less racist than it really was (and is). This revisionary project has, on Nora Berenstain’s interpretation, contributed to a culture of “structural gaslighting” that “exemplifies the strategic forgetting” of philosophy’s racist roots, not incidentally or by accident but as part of “a central methodological tactic” (2020, 1).
In a similar way, Chapman sheds light on philosophy’s history of ableist eugenics, which has been largely omitted from the most “authoritative” resources in the profession. (I use eugenics to denote an ableist regime of power and domination). Philosophers have, on scrutiny, conspired to create a feel-good history for neurotypical/nondisabled people, extolling eugenicists as luminaries and progressives while erasing their contributions to forced sterilization and genocide. Why would philosophers do this? As Chapman suggests, neurocapitalism tends to reward eugenicists and punish their opponents. This is confirmed by the growing popularity of philosophical “newgenicists,” who promote a ‘kinder, more humane’ version of eugenics for “progressive liberals.”
In the next section, I will unpack Chapman’s key arguments, and then explain why, rather than attempting to explain the persistence of eugenics, many philosophers have chosen to burnish the reputations of eugenicists, reimagining them as icons of civility and knowledge.
I want to clarify at the outset that the following is my own interpretation of Chapman’s book, which takes some creative liberties, adds my own thoughts, and uses my own characteristic tone.
Neurocapitalism: What Is It Good For? Absolutely Nothing.
Chapman’s key insight is that contemporary (‘late-stage’) capitalism is less about class-based oppression than neuronormative oppression. The popular narrative is that neurodivergent/disabled people are useless to capitalism, and this is why they/we have a high rate of unemployment; but this story is an oversimplification. Capitalism commodifies neurodivergence/disability in a variety of ways that Chapman unpacks throughout their book.
First, neurodivergent/disabled people fill the ranks of what Marx called the “reserve army” or “surplus population”’ which can be reabsorbed into the labor force in case of labor shortages, strikes, and economic downturns. At the same time, the very existence of the surplus class decreases workers’ bargaining power by making them replaceable at a moment’s notice. (Typically, when unemployment goes up, wages go down). During economic upturns, on the other hand, the surplus class is still useful to capitalism, since neurodivergent/disabled people can be institutionalized en masse in prisons, nursing homes, and various “industrial complexes” that outsource services to private contractors while receiving public funding. Mass institutionalization thus provides both a captive market and a back-up labor supply to corporations.
Meanwhile, the specter of disabled/neurodivergent misery caused by the systemic exploitation and oppression of the surplus class serves another purpose: disciplining and terrifying nondisabled/neurotypical people into submission to the intense demands of capitalism. In late-stage capitalism, the ideal worker must have not only the right (productive, interchangeable) body, but also the right (agreeable, resilient) mind. The demand for both physical and mental subservience is generating a mass existential crisis.
On this note, Chapman explains that a defining feature of the modern (post-Fordist) economy is the requirement of emotional labor and self-discipline, which emerged during the transition from an industrial, factory-based economy to a post-industrial, service economy. In the service sector, workers must be not only productive but also pleasant, agreeable, and patient, as well as sufficiently flexible, adaptive, and resilient to weather the ups and downs of service work, including variable schedules, technological changes, short-term gigs, chronic lay-offs, and shrinking benefits. The line between the nondisabled/neurotypical and the disabled/neurodivergent has become blurred as the demands of the service-based economy induce mass alienation, anxiety, and depression.
The relationship between neurodivergence and capital, however, is more complicated than we might assume, since capitalism doesn’t just relegate neurodivergent/disabled people to the surplus population; it also recruits those with so-called “neurodivergent strengths or ‘superpowers’” into the labor force, hailing them as superior to the “low-functioning” neurodivergent/disabled majority (Chapman 2023, 141). The idealization of the “supercrip” as a heroic overcomer serves not only to stigmatize the surplus class (which is percevied as an economic burden and moral risk by comparison), but also to funnel money into the burgeoning “normalization industry,” which sells products and services designed to “normalize” neurodivergence and “help” neurodivergent people succeed in the neuronnormative workforce.
Elon Musk strikes me as a good example of this divide. He describes himself as having Asperger’s Syndrome, which is “often considered a high-functioning form of autism.” Musk is sometimes cited as proof that “some autistic people have extraordinary strengths and talents and can sometimes outperform non-autistic people on certain tasks,” especially in the fields of “science and tech.” Musk has done nothing to dispute this narrative and seems to embrace it. He distinguishes himself from the autistic community by using the label of Asperger’s Syndrome (which was removed from the DSM in 2013), and has used his class privilege to harm rather than help disabled people; for example, he has openly mocked a disabled ex-Twitter employee, downplayed the pandemic, opened a Tesla factory in defiance of a public health order, and bashed unions that protect disabled (and nondisabled) workers. To my mind, Musk is a stark reminder that self-styled “supercrips” can be a greater stumbling block to the disability justice movement than the most ableist neurotypical/nondisabled people.
In sum, capitalism exploits and commodifies neurodivergence to enrich the 1%. Chapman’s analysis of neurodiversity as a function of capital is widely overlooked in mainstream philosophy, which is divided between two paradigms: the medical model on the one hand, and the liberal-reformist model on the other. Whereas the medical model pathologizes and stigmatizes neurodivergence, the liberal-reformist paradigm espouses “a liberal, rights-based framework, which focuses on incremental reforms within the current system” (Chapman 2023, 7). The liberal paradigm, at best, helps “supercrips” rise in the ranks of an ableist economy, and at worst, makes life harder for the “sadcrips” whose disabilities are less marketable and trendy.
Alternatives to these paradigms, including (neuro)Marxist ones, are few and far between. Why is this? One explanation that emerges from Chapman’s analysis is that capitalists rise to the top. Hence, capitalist-friendly philosophers, whether conservative or liberal, tend to get tenure, win grants, and gain publicity. Chapman’s genealogical analysis of “‘great’ (or not so great) men” (Chapman 2023, 15), depending on who’s writing the story, reveals a persistent pattern of favoritism for capitalist/neoliberal thinkers, especially those who promote a eugenic agenda.
Erasing Neurocapitalism & Burnishing the Reputations of “Great Men”
Descartes has been criticized many times over for his sexism and colonialism, but few have commented on his ableism. He has been indicted for propagating an “individualistic, private, abstract” and “mechanistic” theory of knowledge that masculinizes and Westernizes rationality while feminizing and racializing emotions and bodily drives (Code 1983, 5), and for promoting the use of abstract thought experiments (e.g., about evil demons) that obfuscate and distract from the reality of structural injustice (Mills 2017). Yet Descartes’ critical role in ableist/neuronormative oppression has, until now, been widely overlooked.
Chapman points out that Descartes’ philosophy spawned a conceptual revolution that replaced equilibrium theories of health with mechanistic ones that were beneficial to capitalists. Prior to Descartes, the Hippocratics (amongst others) believed that illness could be caused by an imbalance of four bodily “humors” or else disharmony between individual and environment. While incorrect, this theory recognized that disease depends on environmental factors ranging from diet to the weather to politics. Descartes rejected the equilibrium model in favor of a mechanistic one that treats the human body as a machine that works like a clock, with parts that perform specific functions. If a clock breaks, this is because its mechanisms no longer work (not because of a misalignment between the clock and its environment), and therefore the clock should be replaced or repaired. This mechanistic understanding of human functioning caught on because it reinforced the capitalistic understanding of individuals as cogs in the machine, objects with a designated role and specific use value.
Descartes’ philosophy was widely adopted, then, “not just because it was useful for medicine,” but also because it was “enormously useful for capital, since by the nineteenth century, the industrialists, plantation owners, and other capitalists had come to see their workers as individual machines who could be working or broken” (Chapman 2023, 32).
As an aside, it might be worth mentioning that the clock is a symbol of both capitalism and fascism, regimes that attempt(ed) to “optimize” human productivity by forcing people to work on an hourly schedule decided by a boss or dictator. A common (albeit false) endorsement of Mussolini was that he “made the trains run on time,” which solidified his association with the clock. Jeff Bezos, the richest American at the time of writing, has spent $42 million on the Clock of the Long Now, which is supposed to keep time for 10,000 years, long after the world has been destroyed by billionaires like Bezos himself, who produce the majority of the world’s greenhouse-gas emissions and nonbiodegradable waste. The clock motif that Descartes popularized continues to be a leading symbol of totalitarian capitalism.
The mechanistic paradigm was later embraced by eugenicists like Francis Galton and Emil Kraepelin, who appropriated it as the basis for a “science” of normal functioning that could be used to identify “degenerates” and separate them from the general population. Although Kraepelin is widely known as the “father of modern psychiatry,” it was Galton who pioneered the use of biometrics to identify “inferior stock”; Kraepelin merely extended this paradigm beyond “feeble-mindedness” to types of “mental degeneracy” (Chapman 2023, 55). Kraepelin’s work was motivated by the worry, in his words, that “an everwidening stream of inferior stock [is mixing] itself with our offspring, [contributing] to the deterioration of the race” (ibid). He described Galton as a “fine old gentleman, who stimulated the field of psychology” (53). This suggests that the true founder of scientific psychiatry was not Kraepelin at all, but his role model, Galton. Nonetheless, Kraepelin’s endorsement of the Galtonian paradigm paved the way for the Galtonian Institute, which endorsed the forced sterilization and segregation of ‘mental degenerates.’ Kraepelin’s contributions to global eugenics cannot be overstated.
Nonetheless, philosophical histories continue to name Kraepelin as the founder of scientific psychiatry. This might be because Galton is universally reviled for his eugenic beliefs. To avoid giving credit such a heinous person, philosophers have seemingly passed the buck onto Kraepelin. Yet Kraepelin was no less instrumental than Galton in the rise of eugenics and, ultimately, the Holocaust. Despite this, the Stanford Encyclopedia entry on Philosophy of Psychiatry omits Kraepelin’s ties to eugenics, merely describing him as a proponent of the ‘minimal interpretation’ of mental illness. Not a word is said of his eugenic beliefs or relation to Galton. This omission erases the testimony of the many people killed by the eugenic regime, often after being designated as a “degenerate” by Kraepelin’s “scientific” toxonomy.
Philosophy of law does much the same thing. Chapman notes that 19th-Century legal theorists adopted the eugenic standard of “average understanding” as a means to “exclude people with cognitive disabilities from inheriting property, and to allow distant family members with ‘normal’ levels of understanding to be able to (usually unfairly) extract that property” (Chapman 2023, 38-39). This legal fiction, along with the related standards of “ordinary understanding” and “reasonable prudence,” were used to disenfranchise and disinherit disabled/neurodivergent people. They were also convenient tools for enforcing segregation and sterilization laws. Although Chapman does not mention this case, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., the author of the “reasonable man” standard, wrote a famous opinion for the Supreme Court stating that Carrie Buck, along with her mother and sister, should be forcibly sterilized because “three generations of imbeciles is enough.” This “opinion was never overturned and led to a marked increase in sterilizations across the United States,” and later, “at the Nuremberg Trials, Nazi defendants cited [this opinion] in their own defense.”
Holmes’s role in the rise of eugenic sterilizations across the United States has been omitted by the revisionary histories of analytic legal philosophers, including a Standard Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Theories of the Common Law of Torts. This entry discusses Holmes extensively but never mentions his eugenic beliefs, or his opinion in the Carrie Buck case, though his defense of eugenics was, many historians agree, his most significant contribution to American politics. On one estimate, Holmes’s decision may have led to 70,000 forced sterilizations in the U.S. alone.
These historical figures are dead and gone, but what can we say about living philosophers? Have they renounced the eugenic ideals of the past? Chapman gives us good reason to doubt this. In ethics, for example, the notion of “normal functioning” is still widely endorsed:
Indeed, the Galtonianisation of the good life has occurred even among highly nuanced ethicists. For instance, in her 2006 book Frontiers of Justice, philosopher Martha Nussbaum proposed that the ‘species norm (duly evaluated) tells us what the appropriate benchmark is for judging whether a given creature has decent opportunities for flourishing’. For Nussbaum, this makes normalization a moral imperative, not just a medical one. Hence for autism, she proposes “special efforts” are required to help autistics “attain the core capabilities that form part of that species norm” (Nussbaum 2006, 123).
This is just one of many instances of neuronormative logic in analytic philosophy. Although Chapman tends to focus on historical circumstances, Shelley Tremain has argued that contemporary ethics, especially bioethics, is still “undergirded [by] a neoliberal governmentality of eugenics,” which continues to harm disabled/neuronodivergent people (2017: 26). One of the starkest examples of this disturbing trend is the “newgenetics” movement, led by people like Peter Singer, John Harris, and Julian Savulescu, who believe that we have a moral obligation to use reproductive technologies (and, in Singer’s case, infanticide) to eliminate disabilities and, by extension, disabled people. Adopting this policy would, as Robert Sparrow argues, produce “a world eerily similar to that dreamed of by previous generations of eugenicists” (such as Galton and Kraepelin) – namely, one that decides who deserves to be born based on “the prevailing bigotry of the times” (2011: 39).
Regardless of where one stands on this debate, it is notable that the entire debate is missing from the main Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on bioethics, Theory and Bioethics, and is barely mentioned in the feminist entry, Feminist Bioethics. Why would the SEP have so little to say about such an important debate, one that decides which people should be allowed to exist?
The general impression given by the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is that philosophers are conspiring to erase the profession’s support for eugenics by laundering the reputations of ‘great men’ (like Kraepelin) or erasing them from history (like Galton). In many cases, important debates about eugenics are mysteriously absent. This is an example of gaslighting that makes analytic philosophy appear more ideal and less ableist than it really is.
Why do philosophers continue to perpetuate these “disappearance narratives” (as I have called them)? Chapman’s analysis points to neurocapitalism, a system of eugenics that separates the “productive” and “generative” workers from the “unproductive” and “degenerate” surplus class. Neurocapitailsm rewards people who defend this profitable division and punishes its critics. As such, philosophers who sanitize eugenics and burnish the reputations of eugenicists reap the rewards; their stories are published, cited, and funded.
In this rigged economy, what chance does a (neuro)Marxist like Chapman have to rise to the top, or even the middle? Like me, Chapman is a contingent faculty member – a status predicted by their analysis of neurocapitalism as a system of oppression that punishes anti-neuronormative resistance. Since Chapman rejects the label of “supercrip”’ they cannot be incorporated into the economy as an icon of “neurodivergent resilience,” someone who heroically overcame their disability to become a success story and a role model to others. Perhaps philosophers will pay attention to Chapman’s paradigm-breaking critique of neurocapitalism, but there is little chance that Chapman will rise to the ranks of a superstar like Singer or Savulescu, people who think that Chapman (and I) should never have been born. Indeed, there is a good chance that Chapman’s work will not even appear in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, since it doesn’t fit with the ideal-theoretic narratives about ‘continuous progress’ helmed by ‘great men’ that philosophers invent about the past.
Closing
In closing, I will let Chapman comment on my creative reading of their book, which allowed me to contribute some of my own thoughts, and to leverage Chapman’s critique to hold the profession responsible for what I take to be structural ableist gaslighting, i.e., a form of strategic forgetting and historical revisionism that perpetuates eugenic stereotypes and alienates disabled people from the profession. As someone with a specialization in moral responsibility, I feel that it would be remiss of me not to take this opportunity to demand accountability and change from the profession. Chapman’s work, which ought to be widely read and taught, leaves no doubt that analytic philosophy is long overdue for a reckoning.
One question I have for Chapman is: do you think that the language we use to describe neurodivergence is immaterial? I noticed that you use neurodivergence, madness, and mental illness seemingly interchangeably. This is somewhat surprising, since “mental illness” is associated with the pathology paradigm that you reject. Perhaps as a neuroMarxist, you believe that the language we use is less important than the material conditions that structure our lives and relationships, so we shouldn’t argue over language. Could you clarify?
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*In a show of solidarity with this symposium, Pluto Press will take 30% off the purchase of paperback copies of the book and ebooks until the end of the calendar year. To get this discount on Empire of Normality, use the discount code BIOPHIL30 at plutobooks.com — the Pluto Press website.
BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY 