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Robert Chapman’s new book provides a Marxist historical analysis of the development of the “Empire of Normality” alongside the development of capitalism. The “Empire of Normality” is “an apparatus of material relations, social practices, scientific research programmes, bureaucratic mechanisms, economic compulsions, and administrative procedures that emerge from fundamental dispositions of the capitalist system, at least once it reaches a certain stage of development” (Chapman 2023, 15). This apparatus imposes dominating restrictions and expectations which serve to restrict the kinds of bodymind that are acceptable. Chapman draws on Nick Walker’s concept of the “pathology paradigm,” the assumption that there is only one correct way for human bodies and minds to function, and that it is wrong to diverge from this (Walker 2021, 125; Chapman 2023, 6), and traces the origins and development of this paradigm through the last three centuries. Chapman locates the emergence of the neurodiversity movement itself within the context of the Empire of Normality, articulating the ways in which it can be coopted by capitalist logics. By providing a historicized understanding of the present situation, Chapman hopes that we may be better able to develop and work for more liberatory alternatives.
I’ll preface all my other comments by saying that I enjoyed the book and appreciate its insights. I read it not only as an academic who works in philosophy of disability, but also as a late-diagnosed autistic ADHDer. I realized that I was neurodivergent during the early part of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, a time when many social and economic norms and requirements were suspended, altered, or challenged. The time of my formal diagnosis and my reckoning with what my neurodivergence meant in my life coincided with the demand to get “back to normal.” I am deeply suspicious of this demand. The “normality” discussed in Empire of Normality isn’t precisely the same as the “normal” associated with the removal of all public health protections and workplace accommodations experienced within the last couple of years, but it speaks to a similar insistence that the needs of human bodies and minds must be subject to the needs of the capitalist economic system.
A quick note, to situate my comments: I work in history of philosophy and in particular German idealism, but I am not a Marx expert; I work in philosophy of disability, and lately have been doing some work on neurodiversity; but I am not expert in the history of anti-psychiatry or current critical psychiatry. I hope my comments are of interest – I am very much looking forward to reading what the other contributors to the symposium have to say!
Focus on Political Solidarity over Ontology
Much work in philosophy of disability gets caught up in the question of “what is disability?” This makes sense, in order to dislodge default beliefs around disability (that disability is solely an individual medical condition, that it is a personal tragedy, etc.) and to emphasize the degree to which it is shaped or constituted through historical, social, cultural, and economic considerations. This work is important in order to demonstrate the possibility of treating disability differently from how it is now.
When something is described as socially constructed, inevitably someone will respond that this is denying that it is real. In her book The Faces of Intellectual Disability, Licia Carlson follows Ian Hacking by arguing that the question of whether a phenomenon is “real” or “socially constructed” is a false binary (Carlson 2010, 86). What is more helpful is to track exactly how something like intellectual disability is conceptualized – analyzing, through historical and current practices, how static stereotypes come to stand in for the dynamic diversity of actual instances, and how power relations and epistemic gatekeepers shape our understanding of something (Carlson 2010, 90-100).
In Empire of Normality, while Chapman regularly asserts the “reality” of various conditions under the neurodivergence umbrella, the focus is less on justifying those assertions than in analyzing and documenting the forces that drive the arguments about that reality.
At several points in the book Chapman documents a tension between conceptualizing neurodivergence as biomedical – a “‘broken brain’ or glitchy mind” account (Chapman 2023, 104) vs. describing it as a “myth” or the product of society and attempts at social control (71-72, 143). Chapters on anti-psychiatry (ch. 5) and psychiatry’s use of the DSM (ch. 7) illustrate this, and Chapman points to it playing out in the history of our conception of neurodivergence as well as in contemporary discourse around neurodiversity.
Reading this, I was reminded of debates that are frequent within ADHD spaces on social media, including various ADHD communities on Reddit. I spend a fair amount of time reading ADHD-related social media; I tend to read them both as a philosopher of disability interested in first person perspectives of ADHD and as an ADHDer looking for advice and support. I have frequently witnessed arguments revolve around the poles of insisting on the biological reality of ADHD irrespective of social conditions vs. insisting that in a utopia it would cease to be an issue altogether. (One point of friction online is that the r/ADHD subreddit, which has 1.9 million members, “does not allow uses of the term Neurodiverse/Neurotypical and similar” [Nerdshark 2024]; this has spurred debate within that subreddit and then commentary and reactions in other ADHD subreddits). ADHDers will sometimes describe therapists, family, or friends insisting that if they practiced better self-care, they wouldn’t need their meds anymore. (This is of course made complicated by the fact that access to medication is difficult — there are persistent shortages in manufacturing, and the medications are highly controlled.)
On Chapman’s account, the tension between pathologization and denial of the reality of neurodivergence serves capitalist ends. They argue that
…capital requires a certain ambiguity in beliefs about mental illness and disablement. On the one hand, it requires us to believe in mental illness and disablement just enough to justify the maintenance of a surplus class, and to be able to incarcerate divergent people who have not committed any recognized crime … But capital also requires us to be sceptical enough about the reality of mental illness and disablement so that it can get away with not providing healthcare or support for the majority of those who need it. (Chapman 2023, 143)
Chapman also takes up a tension between “neurodivergent disabilities such as autism or ADHD” as “random clusters of traits” grouped together by psychiatry vs. “mere identities” proposed by “liberal neurodiversity proponents.” Chapman argues instead that “our current disabilities emerged, certain clusters of traits became salient as disabilities, because of objective material relations emerging from the development of the Empire of Normality” (Chapman 2023, 147).
This allows Chapman to thread the needle carefully: not denying that particular conditions are “real,” but also recognizing that the Empire of Normality does affect everyone. This paragraph is a good example (just quoting the first half, for space):
This is not to say that these problems did not exist prior to post-Fordism, or that things like autism or ADHD are not real disabilities. They are no less “real” than diabetes or dementia. But existing forms of difficulty or disablement, while to some extent grounded in atypical neurological development, were in many cases hugely amplified in this stage of capitalism. Traits that were previously relatively benign became associated with some level of disablement, while traits that might have only been minimally disabling became significantly so … It is not the technology itself that is the problem but rather that technology is primarily used in service of capital, and the various systems of domination that capitalism is intertwined with, which leave so many of us constantly fatigued, far beyond the workplace. (Chapman 2023, 117)
Chapman then goes on, in the next paragraph, to point out that “these forms of disablement are in significant part an extreme expression of issues faced across the general neurological spectrum of humanity” (Chapman 2023, 117).
So we can see, here, in the same breath recognizing how neurodivergent traits are rendered disabling by capitalist pressures, and that these pressures create problems for many. As such, it would make sense to read Chapman’s work alongside work like Kathi Weeks’ The Problem with Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics and Postwork Imaginaries – both in terms of their critical and diagnostic work but also the project of working toward future liberation.
In interviews, Chapman indicates that their account, which recognizes the reality of neurodivergence while also recognizing that social factors such as burnout can also create it, creates “more room solidarity between a workers’ movement and neurodivergent people dealing with neuronormative domination” (Sluggish 2024; see also Aftab 2024).
Chapman’s focus on solidarity in their account of neurodivergence builds on work that Chapman has done elsewhere on autism, metaphysically conceptualizing it as neither purely biological nor purely identity-based, but as a “serial collective.” This is only briefly explained in the book, which cites Sartre for the term “serial collective” (Chapman 2023, 147). In other work by Chapman, however, they develop this concept extensively based on Iris Marion Young’s use of the term, describing it as “defined in light of shared external material factors that mutually affect each member of the collective, regardless of whether they actually identify or not” (Chapman 2020, 810). This concept allows for political solidarity around shared material conditions, rather than asserting an underlying shared essence (biological or otherwise).
Story-telling and the place of Galton
One question I had a few times as I was reading the book concerned the audience for the book and, relatedly, the kind of work it was trying to do. I found the discussion of the history to be interesting (I hadn’t known about Descartes’s daughter Francine or his grief over her death, discussed on pages 24-25) but underdeveloped. I often found myself flipping to the notes section to check the sources on particular historical claims, and found them fairly sparse. It seemed while reading that historical detail has been simplified or abstracted somewhat in order to make the overall narrative of development and the emergence of various tensions clearer.
Now, not all books need to do all things. (And I will confess to being a bit nerdy about citation).
Reflecting on the book as a whole, I think it makes sense to think of it primarily in terms of a call for political solidarity. The historical analysis is in service of this political call, in order to highlight the contingency of our current arrangements and conceptions, rather than to explore the history’s twists and turns for its own sake. This understanding accords with Chapman’s description of the book in their preface (“it is an attempt to help develop a historical neurodivergent consciousness in such a way that will make collective efforts to develop strategy more possible” [Chapman 2023, x]) and later on (“by showing how the [pathology] paradigm arose and caught on specifically because it allowed the individualisation and reification of neurodivergent disablement, we can better understand the significance and power of the pathology paradigm, as well as what it might take to overcome it,” [137]). As such, it makes sense to have a clear narrative flow for the history, so that the book can find a general readership beyond academia.
The decision to tell a particular history involves choices about what to include and what to omit, around what to focus on and what to gloss over. A significant part of the narrative of the development of the “pathology paradigm” concerns Francis Galton (1822-1911). There is a chapter titled “Galton’s paradigm,” and the following chapter, “The eugenics movement,” name checks Galton (or “Galtonian”) on six out of its eight pages. Chapman describes Galton as “the founder of the pathology paradigm proper” (63), and so this attention makes sense for the narrative Chapman develops about the development of this paradigm. And certainly Galton is historically important in understanding both the development of testing and measuring humanity, and the origins of eugenics (including, of course, the coining of the term). Stephen Jay Gould describes him as “constantly seeking new and ingenious ways to measure the relative worth of peoples” (Gould 1981, 76).
Chapman uses Galton and “Galtonian” later in the book to stand for the paradigm of devaluing and pathologizing those who are lower ranked on a scale of biological traits. A chapter about the development of American psychiatry’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is titled “The return of Galtonian psychiatry” in order to emphasize the ways that mental disorders were defined objectively according to divergence from “normal” functioning (Chapman 2023, 102-3). In the chapter after that, the clinical understanding of things like ADHD and autism is framed “through the neo-Galtonian pathology paradigm” (118). Contemporary approaches to euthanasia and MAiD (medical assistance in dying) are described in juxtaposition with Galton’s eugenics, noting that the difference rests in Galton seeing the “social harmfulness of subnormal cognition” as “a task for governmental intervention,” as opposed to locating the harm “at the individual level and thus a matter of individual responsibility” (124)
This repeated invocation of Galton makes narrative sense as a shorthand for a particular approach to measuring humanity and devaluing and pathologizing those lower on a scale. Given the book’s overall purpose, a focus on Galton helps emphasize the message that we are where we are because of particular work at a particular time – which can help make clear that we could do things differently.
However, it stands out a bit oddly for a Marxian historical analysis to focus so repeatedly on one specific historical figure. René Descartes and Thomas Szasz are also important figures for the history Chapman is interested in, but I found the discussions of Descartes and Szasz and their influences much more carefully situated in their social, political, and economic contexts. Galton, by contrast, is discussed in ways that seem to stand out from his context, as more of a singular figure. I worry a bit that this serves to overshadow the broader development of what Gould called “the mismeasure of man” going on in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
For instance, Henry H. Goddard (1866-1957), born just half a century after Galton, would seem also to have played a key role in the development of the “Empire of Normality,” as someone who worked for the incorporation of intelligence testing into American schools, hospitals, and the military, who proposed systems for classifying people based on IQ, and who warned of the social dangers of letting the feeble-minded reproduce. While further removed from a specific story about the development of psychiatry (Chapman draws a line from Galton to early psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin), Goddard’s work seems important in the institutionalization and systematization of normalizing processes in social institutions. I wouldn’t want to have seen Galton simply swapped for Goddard, but a fuller picture of the range of forces driving the pathology paradigm that didn’t pin them quite so closely on one figure would have been fascinating.
Again – given the purpose (and intended length and audience) of the book, I can understand the story-telling choice to use Galton. But I do think that it’s a missed opportunity to have gone into greater (and messier) historical detail here, and I hope that that book gets written too someday. We have histories of this period, but as far as I know, not written from an explicitly neurodivergent perspective or connecting to neurodiversity politics. (Blog readers! If I am wrong, I would love to read your recommendations).
Concluding Thoughts on Neurodiverse and Disability Futures
One of the reasons given by the mods of the r/ADHD subreddit to ban use of the term “Neurodiverse” is that they believe that the neurodiversity movement distances neurodiversity from disability (Nerdshark 2022). This belief seems incorrect to me based on my own reading about and experience with neurodiversity, but social media has many individual instances of people claiming to be neurodivergent instead of being disabled, in ways that construe “being disabled” as a state incompatible with agency. This also might fit into the kind of liberal neurodiversity approach Chapman criticizes, which in emphasizing productivity and “super-powers” might downplay disability (Chapman 2023, 141). Conversely, I have seen people refuse the idea of neurodiversity because they didn’t want to lose the label of “disability” and its implications for access to medication and accommodation.
There is not enough time in the day to argue with everyone who is wrong about this on the internet – but it is good to have a readable book that places the neurodiversity and disability movements together. While Chapman is focused on neurodiversity rather than disability a whole, the book is informed by disability theory and politics. Chapman talks about their growing awareness of the neurodiversity paradigm as something that helped them “develop solidarity with other disabled and chronically ill people, and even a sense of disability pride” (Chapman 2023, 7). Toward the end of the book, they argue that the Disability Justice movement in the United States is an “important development” for the neurodiversity movement (141-2). Chapman emphasizes the importance of solidarity generally.
The book closes with a call for a “mass anti-capitalist politics of neurodiversity,” linking it with “broader efforts toward collective liberation” (Chapman 2023, 165). I’m excited by the kinds of connections that can be built by shared refusal of the Empire of Normality. I have neurodivergent friends even outside of philosophy excited about this book, and I’m looking forward to the conversations that ensue.
References:
Aftab, Awais. 2024. “A Materialist History of Pathology and Neurodiversity: A Conversation with Robert Chapman,” Psychiatry at the Margins,https://www.psychiatrymargins.com/p/a-materialist-history-of-pathology
Carlson, Licia. 2010. The Faces of Intellectual Disability. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Chapman, Robert. 2023. Empire of Normality: Neurodiversity and Capitalism. London: Pluto Press.
Chapman, Robert. 2020. “The Reality of Autism: On the Metaphysics of Disorder and Diversity,” Philosophical Psychology 33 (6): 799-819. https://doi.org/10.1080/09515089.2020.1751103
Gould, Stephen Jay. 1981. The Mismeasure of Man. New York: W.W. Norton & Co.
Meadows, Jesse. 2024. “Neurodivergent Power, Not Superpowers w/ Robert Chapman,” Sluggish, https://www.sluggish.xyz/p/neurodivergent-power-not-superpowers
Nerdshark. 2024. “Community Rules,” https://www.reddit.com/r/ADHD/wiki/rules/
Nerdshark. 2022. “Let’s Talk about the Neurodiversity Movement a Bit,” https://www.reddit.com/r/ADHD/comments/md5cfr/lets_talk_about_the_neurodiversity_movement_a_bit/
Walker, Nick. 2021. Neuroqueer Heresies: Notes on the Neurodiversity Paradigm, Autistic Empowerment, and Postnormal Possibilities. Fort Worth: Autonomous Press.
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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 