Neuroqueering: the liberatory practice of freeing oneself (and others by extension) from the neuro- and hetero- normative performances of self and relationship. 

Neuroqueer is a verb and an adjective, an action and an identity. Neuroqueering is contingent upon and fascinated by neurodivergence and queerness. Neuroqueering is a sensorial trip, felt deeply within a sensing body. Neuroqueering is culturing and sheltering. Neuroqueering has the potential to transform everything that it touches – and not into gold, but a queerer and more interesting prima materia. Neuroqueering is a psychic revolt, an appropriation of time as a medium for the propagation of power.

Neuroqueering is not a solitary pursuit. It is continuous and simultaneous broadcast and reception. It is inherently relational [internally and externally] and collective; it is the consensual cocreation of the plural I, where all subjects contained within are animate, conscious and equally constitutive of the totality. 

Neuroqueering is subject to debate. There is no comprehensive definition, and nor should there be. The Network's conceptualisation of Neuroqueering is directly inspired and influenced by (amongst others) Nick Walker, M. Remi Yergeau, Damian Milton, Louisa Shaeri, Robert Chapman, Jesse Meadows, Neptune Henriksen, Claude Cahun, Danni Spooner, Sam Metz, Travis Alabanza, Flannery O’kafka, Bernard Steigler, Shayne Oliver, Jenny Döll, Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, Audre Lorde, Alexander Shulgin, Leonora Carrington, Frantz Fanon, Alok Vaid-Menon, Isabelle Fremeaux and Jay Jordan, Arca, Gloria Anzaldua, bell hooks, James Baldwin, Jané E Mackenzie, Paulo Freire, Paul Preciado, Stuart Hall, Isabel Waidner, and Ursula K le Guin.

These people did not all explicitly engage in Neuroqueering, or adopt Neuroqueer identities. In practice though, their works continue to have enduringly Neuroqueering impact. 

NEUROQUEERING: A POEM

Imagine that each Human is made up of 2 four-dimensional shapes.

Inner Shape and Outer Shape.

Inner Shape: real Self. It is emergent from our unique bodyminds, in assemblage with all other beings. It is transitionary and in flux, ever becoming [seeking being], never static: a non-Euclidean Blob. Voluminous mass of tenderness and love.
Is it Soul? The conscious universe experiencing itself? Is it imagination—that gift of grace? Is it purpose [individual AND collective, one and the same]? What we were destined to be?

Inner Shape breathes, pulsing vitality and life. Flesh permeable and soft, skin indeterminate and fuzzy. Lacking borders but recognising boundaries. It is constantly in relation, absorbing energetic frequencies emitted by others, resonating, broadcasting across spacetime.

When one region of Inner Shape expands, another may contract; or perhaps the whole shape shrinks and grows all at once. There are no two identical Inner Shapes and they [we] are all beautiful and wondrous.

Outer Shape is imposed from without, stiff and difficult to shift. Like
steel armour
fibrotic tissue
calloused skin
calcified organ
ossified cartilage
fossilised bone
rigidified and tense, holding embodied memories of violence past present and future.
Vertices point, faces stare, edges bristling fortified walls.

Outer Shape forms as we traverse the fourth dimension. Inner Shape encounters danger; we take the prefabricated parts offered to us and assemble them around, following instructional scripts tossed to us. Imitating mass-produced models of Human, seeking salvation in submission to a more certain Other. Default parts provided in binary; choose this one or that one. “Not really much of a choice at all”, as I lay bricks up around me.

Outer Shape protects and holds [IN] traumatised Inner Shape without care or healing. Constricts without pleasure. The Blob becomes a bound victim, denied responsibility and choice. Cruel paradox! >Claustrum< and <Agora>: phobias of.

Inner Shape strains [OUT] with desire. Frustrated, restricted. I NOTICE THIS. Feel anxiety, stress, anger, fear, sadness, alienation, loneliness, confusion, shame, guilt, pity… Tight chest, churning stomach, dry mouth and racing thoughts, desperation for safety and a hopeless unbelonging. Thought and feeling feedback and tighten in looping coils. Outer Shape has tensegrity.

BUT FUCK THAT

Neuroqueering—
fracturing and dismantling Outer Shape with gentle fury—
dripping with weird-awkward autistic charm and
infinitesimal moments of intimate eye contact—
transmogrifying and heretical words—
kinetic emancipation through stimmy motion—
easing the pinch with gentle-firm touch—
lubricating the cracks with spit and slime—
beckons Inner Shape to safe waters—
NEUROQUEERING MUST BE DECOLONISATION,

REVOLUTION IN MIND BODY AND SPIRIT,

WORD THOUGHT AND DEED,
a collective offering to the universe
of liberation.

Inner Shape slithers out and lies exhausted in a pool of visceral ectoplasmic fluid. Panting and shivering like a newborn of impossible shape. It is hard won, and this freedom is ecstatic. Inner Shapes shine like the stars, the sun, and the moon. Made of the same stuff.