• 1 Judy Singer, Neurodiversity, the Birth of an Idea, Melbourne, Amazon Australia Services, 2016.
• 2 CLE Autiste: Collectif pour la liberté d’expression des autistes, “Neurodiversité.” [Online] https: (...)
• 3 Gregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of the Mind, San Francisco, Chandler Publishing Company, 1972.

1Neurodiversity is a magmatic word. Originally, it referred to a research hypothesis proposing an inclusive representation of autism and related disorders.1 Today, it often designates digital communities of people with neurological differences (autistic, schizophrenic, ADHD, etc.) centered around forums, social networks, and Reddit threads, while at other times it designates a “philosophical concept”2 denoting the relationships between the human body and its environment, beyond medical diagnostic categories. The internal turbulence underlying neurodiversity partly justifies the absence of a clear definition of the term. It resembles what anthropologist Gregory Bateson called a knot in a handkerchief: a necessarily vague term which makes it possible to express controversies, to splice problems into subsets whose stakes are more easily observable.3

• 4 Tommaso Venturini, “Diving in magma: How to explore controversies with actor-network theory,” Publi (...)

2Half a century after Gregory Bateson, Tommaso Venturini gave these vague terms the name “magma,” emphasizing the social and technical implications in the liquid/solid nature of these terms.4 Thus, not only do the terms’ definitions get made and unmade: the social and technical relationships themselves solidify and liquefy at the whim of agreements and disagreements among the various parties.

• 5 See the co-authored self-published work: Steven Kapp (ed.), Autistic Community and the Neurodiversi (...)
• 6 Marta Nussbaum, “The capabilities of people with cognitive disabilities,” Metaphilosophy, no. 40.3- (...)
• 7 Melanie Yergeau, Authoring Autism. On Rhetoric and Neurological Queerness, Durham, Duke University, (...)

3The case of neurodiversity is emblematic of the magmatic turbulence in controversy. The question of whether or not neurodiversity can include non-autistic people on its continuum, or if this continuum only concerns people with neurological divergences, has not only generated internal controversies in several online communities; it has led experts to write scientific articles, it has spurred publications,5 engendered philosophical concepts around logic and politics,6 and legitimized vernacular practices such as self-diagnosis, by shifting the boundaries between normal and pathological, scholar and layman, object of study and subject of inquiry.7

• 8 Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social. An Introduction to Actor Network Theory, Oxford, Oxford Univ (...)
• 9 See, for example, Nick Walker: [Online] https://neurocosmopolitanism.com/ and Robert Chapman: https (...)

4Controversies in the field of neurodiversity ensure the diffusion of differing literatures, raising large stakes in terms of ontology and politics (such as whether or not to attribute an empathetic functioning to autistic people), but also in terms of epistemology (for example, which theoretical model of the human body should be adopted in order to develop tools for emotional analysis adapted to diverse neurocognitive profiles?). Thus, they generate not only socio-medical controversies, but cosmopolitical8 ones as well. The multitude of players concerned with neurodiversity, as well as the figure of the autistic researcher (researchers at universities who define themselves first and foremost as members of the autistic community9), contribute to further liquefying the magma of neurodiversity.

• 10 Adrienne Massanari, Participatory Culture, Community and Play. Learning from Reddit, Bern, Peter La (...)

5Indeed, while historically the first concepts of neurodiversity were built via mailing lists, such as that of Autism Network International, today neurodiverse people connect on social networks in order to share multimedia content and various types of texts (scientific writing, personal accounts, etc.) of various tones (humorous, serious, playful, etc.). The Reddit platform, in proposing an intermediary writing format halfway between a social network and a forum, has become a central hub for interconnective knowledge among neurodiverse communities (the community “r/neurodiversity,” with its research-creation project, has more than 16,000 registered avatars). The presence of instant messaging, karma (the equivalent of Facebook likes) and the individual profiles which group together various previous posts, makes Reddit more like a traditional social network, such as Facebook. However, the presence of posts on threads and comments shared within public communities, as well as the access to commented threads through a general search engine such as Google, makes it more like a forum. This hybrid format, combining social networks’ visibility algorithms, quasi-anonymity, and the public nature of forums, makes Reddit a platform particularly suited to observing “uninhibited digital sociability” around controversial subjects.10

• 11 Ralph Savarese, “More than a thing to ignore: An interview with Tito Rajarshi Mukhopadyay,” Disabil (...)

7Observing the already existing controversies on social networks (and in particular on Reddit) has brought to light common factors among engaged players: these players (people diagnosed with autism, self-diagnosed, various allies, neuroscience researchers, activists, etc.) all agree on the fact that there is something of a human neurocognitive biodiversity, and that protecting this biodiversity is in the interest of humanity (not only in the interest of people diagnosed with autism). According to them, this biodiversity is expressed as a different reactivity to sensory and cognitive stimuli (hyper- and hyposensitivity, dyspraxia, dyslexia, sensory processing disorders, etc.), and as an original way of perceiving the environment, of thinking and communicating (such as thinking in images, or showing empathy for non-living elements such as light, walls,11 etc.)

• 12 Amethyst Schaeber, “Ask an autistic #1: what’s stimming?,” YouTube video, 10:38. [Online] https://w (...)

8Furthermore, this something leaves traces behind, both digitally (texts, images, video) and non-digitally, with the aim of instructing and transmitting. For example, repetitive gestures performed by autistic people can lead to video and infographic content on social networks (gathered under a set of hashtags #stimming, #selfregulation) with the goal of illustrating the autistic body’s reactivity, and educating a non-autistic public about sensory particularities, while sharing techniques and objects of sensory regulation with other neurologically diverse individuals. These videos depict what psychiatric medicine traditionally calls “stereotypy” in order to illustrate a therapeutic, playful, and even cultural aspect to these gestures.12 These traces not only aim to de-pathologize autistic gestures by presenting them as “natural” and “therapeutic,” but also help us reconsider what is a norm for the human body, based on sensory regulation gestures.

• 13 “Autiste queer le docu, Shadowban intracommunautaire,” Facebook post, 11 February 2021. [Online] ht (...)
• 14 Alicia Broderick and Robin Roscigno, “Autism, Inc.: The autism industrial complex,” Journal of Disa (...)

9Lastly, what the players have in common is that they consider traces of neurodiversity to be a richness of the human body, and want to defend this richness against a multitude of figures contributing, they say, to their disappearance (these figures are, in turn, non-autistic individuals and false allies,13 lobbyists of psychoanalysis and psychiatry, even the entire neo-liberal society, with its pharmaceutical-industrial system disseminating production and consumption norms14). They argue that this lack of valorization contributes to their endangerment, through a snowball effect (or magma).

• 15 UNESCO, “Qu’est ce que le patrimoine culturel immatériel?” [Online] https://ich.unesco.org/fr/qu-es (...)

10The presence of neuro-diverse communities, tangible and intangible objects, and places of identity ritualization and transmission correspond to UNESCO’s criteria for intangible cultural heritage, according to their 2003 convention.15 A statement made by these aforementioned players about an endangered neurodiverse heritage (its gestures and language) would allow neurodiversity to benefit from safeguarding heritage measures provided by the UNESCO institution.

• 16 Demonstrate the cultural aspect of the object, determine the actors and practices, determine the St (...)
• 17 [Online] https://ich.unesco.org/fr/formulaires [accessed 2 April 2021].

12We chose this last list as the framework for writing this research-creation project. This list establishes five general criteria to be respected in order for something to be registered as intangible cultural heritage.16 These five criteria are elaborated on in the ICH-02 file through questions and sub-questions that allow UNESCO to identify the item and its communities, evaluate current safeguarding practices, and define future safeguarding measures. UNESCO also provides sample files which the committee considers representative of good examples, in order to facilitate the drafting of the proposal.17

• 18 Marta Severo and Tommaso Venturini, “Intangible cultural heritage web: Comparing national networks (...)

16Taking these assumptions into account, along with a broader understanding of cultural heritage, which has expanded over time to include more various items,18 we decided to create a digital piece of work to simulate a meta-controversy (an aggregate of controversies), which allows concerned populations to defend neurodiversity themselves, as UNESCO intangible cultural heritage. Starting with an avatar (/neuro1community/), this meta-controversy consists in generating conversational threads on Reddit neurodiverse communities (r/neurodiversity) by asking internet users questions from the UNESCO representative list of Intangible Cultural Heritage.

• 19 Alexandra Saemmer, “Nouvelles de la colonie – Archives,” Facebook page, 24 March 2019. [Online] htt (...)
• 20 Vanessa Place, Tragodia 1. Statement of Facts, Los Angeles, Insert Blanc Press, 2010.

19As a whole, the project of (co)production, aggregation of interactions across these threads, and reestablishment of results provide a research-experimentation protocol (inspired by writing practices with and on social networks, such as those of Alexandra Saemmer,19 and official found-object documents, such as those of Vanessa Place20) which allows player-networks to expand their current observational practices and controversial discussion topics. These measures can, moreover, promote recognition of the role of online communities and social networks in creating intangible cultural heritage.

• 21 Peter Haas, “Introduction: Epistemic communities and international policy coordination,” Internatio (...)

21An “epistemic authority”21 is taking shape within these communities. It designates, on one hand, profiles of authority, the frequent posting of comments by Internet users often distinguished by a reward system (active participation, contributions recognized by other Internet users, etc.); on the other hand, it points to other profiles with more piecemeal activity. This attempt to examine the heritage values behind their practice, starting with online communities, throws light on various types of digital players engaged in defining the intangible cultural heritage of neurodiversity, such as the webmasters in the Reddit groups, or bloggers frequently cited by the community. This approach also makes it possible to identify other objects that ritualize community identity and determine levels of legitimacy in the transmission of knowledge, such as participation rewards and the “gift” system.

• 22 Ginny Russell, “Critiques of the neurodiversity movement,” in Steven Kapp (ed.), Autistic Community (...)
• 23 Brigitte Chamak, “Autisme et militantisme: de la maladie à la différence,” Quaderni, no. 68, Winter (...)

22The presence of peer experts within a community characterized by different communication modes could further help to identify which communication modes and appropriate language to use when addressing individuals concerned with neurodiversity who may not be present on these online communities, by having direct consultation with the peer experts, or by observing content on their Reddit page. Indeed, neurodiverse communities are characterized by a wide range of communicative functioning among their members22—this range varies from an ability to express oneself through oral speech to an inability to express oneself verbally without the aid of Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) technologies, such as text-to-speech boxes. Online platforms continue to be primary venues for building neurodiverse communities.23

• 24 UNESCO, “Qu’est-ce que le patrimoine culturel immatériel?” [Online] https://ich.unesco.org/fr/qu-es (...)

25The project of entering neurodiversity into the representative list of UNESCO intangible cultural heritage requires engaging a large quantity of players, documents, and administrative operations (such as soliciting government officials), which would seem to exceed my own capacities, as well as the capacities of Internet users on the Reddit threads. This project seems to fall more under the category of fiction and science-fiction writing than that of a project-proposal, which might look more serious in appearance. The latter must, on one hand, follow a precise roadmap—which in the case of UNESCO, takes on the appearance of a back and forth between government and people—while on the other hand must conform to a precise mode of writing, beginning with submitting the object into an inventory of national cultural heritage.24

• 25 Franck Leibovici, Des opérations d’écriture qui ne disent pas leur nom, Paris, Questions Théoriques (...)

27Transposing unmodified official documents into an online, co-authored exercise framework begs the question of the fictional potential in administrative writing, and reveals the presence of scenarios in official documents unforeseen by the officials who put out these documents.25

• 26 /sorandril/, “The aquatic genesis of human intellect and its future direction,” Reddit post, 2021. (...)
• 27 /connersjackson/, “You’re right this is ambitious,” Reddit post, 2021. [Online] https://www.reddit. (...)

29This project ties together various threads between creatures of different scales and distances, in terms of ontology (such as, for example, the elven species mentioned by avatar /sorandril/26 and the national institutions and parliaments mentioned by avatar /connersjackson/27), and engages different cosmologies by making them porous to each other. This porosity is made possible, on the one hand, by the potential for fictional administrative writing, and, on the other, by the potential for collective writings on neurodiverse science fiction in institutional contexts.

• 28 Donna Harraway, Staying with the Trouble. Making kin in the Chthulucene, Durham, Duke University Pr (...)

30These strings we’ve tied not only blur the boundary between our achievable political project and the speculative writing of science fiction, but also void any need to distinguish between seemingly political and narrative aims, as well as any need to discriminate between those who believe in the project’s political reality, and those who conceive of it as a fiction. What concerns us are the threads we tie, this time, between different cosmologies in the sense of a Terrapolis, of what is “both a story and a string game, so that multi-specific worlds can form,” which “take place in a science-fiction network in which there are always too many connections, here where we must patch up the respons-ability together.”28