Antispe Ability in the context of neurodiverse disAbilities, neurodiversity in general, and activism
Our approach to neurodiversity as including anti-speciesist neuro-diversity.
Since multidimensionality, language, ableism, and antispeciesism already play a role within Antispe Ability, neurodiversity [1] – a term we understand as an as-yet open concept of a new, expanded diversity practice – finds its place with us in the following way:
Neurodiversity is understood here as an expanded concept of diversity that does not only include classical social diversity axes such as gender, ethnicity, or sexual orientation, but additionally encompasses:
- animal-sociological perspectives and realities
- a further contextualization of identity, disability, and neurodivergence
- dimensions of communication and access
- power relations between humans and the more-than-human world, analyzed from multiple perspectives
Antispe Ability already addresses the interaction of different forms of discrimination (e.g. ableism in animal rights and activism contexts) – precisely where an approach to neurodiversity must begin if it is to think in a more-than-human–oriented and self-reflexive way.
Neurodiversity in Antispe Ability as antispeciesist neurodiversity
While traditional diversity approaches acknowledge social differences such as gender, ethnicity, or sexual orientation, neurodiversity, as a function in our context, proposes an expansion of this understanding.
For us, it includes disAbility, nonhuman beings, language and communication rights, as well as the interactions between different forms of discrimination and exclusion.
In Antispe Ability, this vision of diversity becomes tangible through the examination of ableism in animal rights and activism contexts not as an isolated phenomenon, but as a multifunctional network of exclusions and barriers to access.
This gives rise to an understanding of diversity that does not only recognize human differences, but also the role of other ways of living and “life forms,” and the ways in which social structures marginalize them.
Why this is relevant
Classical diversity debates often focus exclusively on human identity axes such as gender, race, or ability. We expand this perspective by factoring together animal rights, animal rights activism, and ableism.
In our context, neurodiversity thus becomes part of recognized interconnections that think human–nonhuman relations, disability, language, and access on equal terms — as a truly radical or consistently multiperspectival concept of diversity.
Antispeciesist neurodiversity as a multiperspectival approach within antispeciesist and ableism-critical discourse
The term antispeciesist neurodiversity refers to a conceptually expanded approach to classical diversity models, grounded in animal sociology, that goes beyond primarily hegemonic, anthropocentric categories of difference.
While established diversity discourses predominantly and often exclusionarily focus on human social markers such as gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or religion, our concept of an antispeciesist approach to neurodiversity aims at a multidimensional analysis of power, exclusion, and processes of normation that includes both human and nonhuman actors.
Within the context of antispeciesist enablement or enabledness [the idea behind “Antispe Ability”], neurodiversity gains particular relevance, as ableism is examined not in isolation, but in its entanglement with speciesism and the objectification of animals, communication norms in social spaces, and enabling or disabling activist structures.
Disability does not appear here as an individual deficit, but as a socially produced mechanism of exclusion, stabilized by normative concepts of performance, narrowly differentiated notions of cognition, and autonomy — notions that simultaneously function as central legitimizing patterns of speciesist violence.
Our approach to neurodiversity under these premises allows these entanglements to become analytically visible. It understands diversity not as the mere recognition of difference, but as a critical practice of questioning normative constructions of the subject: constructions that determine whose voices are heard, whose bodies are recognized as capable of action, and whose lives are considered worthy of protection — and the modalities through which this is, in part, enacted.
This approach opens up a space in which antispeciesist ethics, Disability Studies, and ableism-critical activism research can be thought not additively, but relationally.
As a theoretical framework, neurodiversity contributes to freeing animal rights discourses from implicitly ableist and hegemonic anthropocentric assumptions, while at the same time opening diversity concepts toward the systematic ethical inclusion of nonhuman beings and life forms, as well as neurodivergent and disabled perspectives — as something thought together in questions of reciprocal social, political, personal, living, and ideational relations.
In this sense, antispeciesist neurodiversity is understood less as an identity category than as an epistemological intervention aimed at a radical reorientation of concepts of justice and solidarity.
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Note
[1] Neurodiversity refers to a concept from Disability and Neurodiversity Studies that understands neurological differences (e.g. autism, ADHD, dyslexia, Tourette’s, among others) as natural variations of human neurobiology rather than primarily as deficits or disorders. There are differing interpretations of the term.
Introductory resources and discussions:
- Judy Singer – Reflections in Neurodiversity
https://neurodiversity2.blogspot.com/p/what.html - John Cromby & Lucy Johnstone – Neurodiversity – What Exactly Does It Mean?
https://www.madinamerica.com/2024/07/part-1-neurodiversity/
[Links accessed 19.01.2026]