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Paper short abstract

The paper focuses on the notion of neurodiversity and how it informs politics and practices of marginalization in contemporary Japan, where the Western psychiatric categories clash with the local administrative practices that are further nuanced by the pressure of high conformity to social norms.

Paper long abstract

The proposed paper focuses on the notion of neurodiversity and interrogates it as a category of difference that informs politics and practices of marginalization through medical and administrative practices, language, media representation (infantilization, exceptionalism, inspiration porn, a spectacle, or a background prop), and commodification of neurodiverse labor regardless of the intellectual and physical abilities, etc.) in the context of contemporary Japan. The paper specifically analyzes how the notion of neurodiversity is discursively constructed in Japan by institutions as opposed to social media to highlight the tension between institutionalized discourse that keeps on marginalizing while seemingly caring, and the reclamation of agency by the neurodivergent community through social media discourse.

While the phenomenon of neurodiversity remains vaguely defined by both medicians and the neurodiverse community, and thus may or may not include autism, attention deficit and hyperactivity, and different forms of learning disabilities, like dysgraphia or dyscalculia, it has evidently entered the spotlight of international and Japanese scholarly (Sasayama et. al. 2021, Someki et al. 2018, Shimono et al. 2022, Kojima 2020, Minami and Horikawa 2021, Hayakawa et al. 2015), administrative, and other social discussions hosted by popular social media platforms. While the definition remains vague, the practices of marginalization are concrete, and the neurodivergent desire for liberation is evident.

The paper discusses the neurodivergency narrative construction in the unique context of Japan, where the Western psychiatric categories and local administrative practices clash and are then further nuanced by the pressure of high conformity to social norms, as well as the configuration of the welfare provision for neurodiverse individuals. This paper relies on media ethnography and discourse analysis to investigate normative documents and social media content created by neurodiverse individuals in Japan, where content creators open up about their lived experiences and coping strategies they deploy in everyday life to navigate contemporary Japanese society, including the discussions in the comment sections of such content pieces.