Empire of Normality: Neurodiversity and Capitalism by Robert Chapman

  Take a moment to recall everything you know about René Descartes. “I think therefore I am” and all that. Did his means of death make your list? That he was poisoned by a Catholic priest who laced the communion wafer with arsenic? …What?! This is one of the surprising details that emerges in Robert Chapman’s impressive historical analysis Empire of Normality: Neurodiversity and Capitalism.

This nonfiction text essentially posits the thesis that the rise of capitalism created a normalizing framework that produces out-groups of disability that it subsequently exploits for its own wealth-generated ends. The book then champions the idea of reshaping society in a way that is more accessible for the neurodiversity inherent in our society. Ultimately, when we consider “disability,” or discuss ill mental health, the questions are: on what grounds? according to whom? They give the example of autism, which is seen as a disability because the world is not structured to respond to it. The fault lies with our structures, not the individuals who have been excluded from them.

The argument of the book is persuasive in its own right, but what I thought was most fascinating about the text were the historical parallels and the extraordinarily clear articulation of the central points.

In this history, Chapman describes the relationship of people in feudal society to work and disability. The thesis here is that people with disabilities were accommodated in the early days of feudalism—if you had mobility issues, you were given work in the home like sewing, while if you had difficulty in thinking clearly you might still be able to complete the menial tasks of farm life. The conception is probably a little idyllic, but nonetheless effectively establishes that each person had their place irrespective of disabilities.

Chapman then proceeds to explore the transition into a more capitalist and exclusionary mode. Returning to Descartes, for example, we see a concise and precise discussion of the philosopher’s contributions to conceptions of identity. Chapman outlines how Descartes initiated a conception of the human body which is mechanistic. (Chapman makes reference to Descartes’ interest in creating an automaton version of his daughter, though this anecdote appears to be debunked.) In any case, Descartes saw the body as animated not by a soul but by its own machinery. This emerges alongside increasing mechanization of work (and therefore the workforce). When the human body is nothing special, it becomes a machine that can be exploited for the ends of capitalism. 

The problem then becomes one of standardization. Again, the historical backdrop is pretty interesting. They describe how statistics emerged as a discipline from astronomers and astrologers trying to account for the variable appearance of astral bodies. They were searching for regularity and predictability. With the emergence of statistics as a field of study, it also led to the idea of standardization. It became a quest for the average. Capitalist logics adopted the idealism of the ‘average’ in order to increase its profitability: you produce products that appeal to the ‘average’ person. Some people argue that capitalism breeds innovation, but really it breeds the most easily sellable products on a mass-scale, meaning that the consumers which deviate from a conception of the ‘average’ user of product are left out of capitalism’s priorities. Capitalism looked for the ‘average’ needs of consumers and used statistics to render brains and consumers ‘normal’ in their consumption. This becomes even worse following Fordism and the standardized production process.

The trajectory Chapman sets out has a kind of clarity in its logic, and the byproduct is that capitalism creates in-groups and out-groups. The in-groups are people who are neurotypical and able to operate within capitalism’s structures—that is, until they burnout and enter the out-group neurodivergent class. The neurodivergent class is created as an outgroup that needs to access wellness through consumption. Capitalism wins its producers and consumers.

I appreciated that Chapman includes a chapter that addresses the nuances of mental illness. Seeing that capitalism benefits from broadening its conception of disability to create an excluded class, the temptation is to dismiss the psychiatry movement. Chapman, though, reserves a chapter for arguing against the anti-psychiatry movement. I have my own difficulties with the psychiatry movement; Foucault’s critique of the Power-Knowledge that informs the DSM always stuck with me. It does appear that psychiatry aims to normalize the human experience, which feels problematic. But, ignoring the real and authentic suffering of people with mental health concerns seems nearly as problematic as allowing capitalism to exploit them.

One interesting anecdote is Chapman’s account of the alliance between queer folk and the antipsychiatry movement. As many of you surely know, the DSM originally included homosexuality as a mental disorder and we see how antipsychiatry’s objection to the DSM formed an alliance with queer people who might otherwise want to access mental health supports but who object to the DSM’s construction of disorder. When the APA voted to remove homosexuality from the DSM, it should feel like a win, but it opened the question of how mental illness is distinct from other non normative ways of being. It created a conception of the psychiatry industry as arbitrary.

Chapman also looks at the intersection of race and neurodiversity. They provide some historical notes about how antislavery movements and civil rights movements have long been at the forefront of disability advocacy. I’m confident that an entire book could be written on the intersection of disability and antiracism advocacy; Chapman offers a brief but welcome glimpse into that story. There’s also a fair amount of commentary on the development of eugenics movements—even within supposedly liberal spaces—and different philosophies towards treating psychological afflictions (or ‘problems in living’). 

Ultimately, Chapman finds a balance between a questioning of neuronormativity while still holding space for the genuine afflictions in peoples’ lives, especially those that have been exacerbated by capitalism (cf. Mark Fisher re: depression within capitalist structures). As the world becomes more reified, the notion is that minds also must become more reified. Championing neurodiversity means that we recognize a philosophy towards society: different kinds of minds are suited to different kinds of tasks.

The book was really insightful into the historical context for neurodiversity and presents a persuasive argument for the connection between the standardization of capitalism and the production of out-groups (potentially stretching the definition of mental health so far as to render everyone disabled and thus consumers within the capitalist models). I really appreciated how thoughtful Chapman is in his approach and how applicable the text feels for engaging in advocacy both against capitalism and in favour of a neurologically diverse population.

Happy reading!

Stone Serpent by Tristan Dineen

  Before I start this review, I’ve got a few disclaimers I need to acknowledge. The author of the book and I are friends and I’ll primarily be focusing on my highlights for the text. Additionally, my review is based on a pre-publication manuscript that I was editing so the author, Tristan Dineen, may very well have adjusted the final copy. With those disclaimers done, we can begin on Dineen’s latest fantasy novel: Stone Serpent.

Not that I’m an expert, but I think that a few core elements that make fantasy novels successful are world-building and character development. On both fronts, I think Stone Serpent works. Right from the prologue, Dineen demonstrates a strength in setting the scene with effective imagery (a little later the “dull green hump of Weya-Nama wore a broken crown of ruins”), and the conflict between slavers and a supernatural snake-man sets up some expectations for the world’s magic. There’s a pretty gruesome moment that establishes the tone of the book—and the potential of the book’s evil forces—and serves as a compelling entrypoint to the conflict.

When the novel starts in earnest, we shift perspective to a young boy, Ta, on the occasion of a local ceremony. Once again, Dineen establishes our understanding of the world, their beliefs, their practices. I appreciated the focused scope in this section; it felt like a nice introduction to the world and the novel explores the broader scope of the world more gradually. It felt inviting and, in my opinion, the more immersive for it.

Ta stands out as one of text’s most memorable characters. He’s a brash young guy whose idealism drives his reckless actions. He longs to be a hero and, later, to claim (if a little preemptively) his destiny in the form of his ancestor’s sword. He reads somewhat like a Don Quixote figure, obsessed with stories of adventure and putting his friends at risk to live out the fantasy. Ta’s friend Lu possesses a similar affliction, but in the draft version he reads a little more one-dimensionally—an enthusiastic yes man for Ta’s misadventures. The two together serve as our initial duo that initiate us into the world and whose interest in stories of old parallels those of the reader.

In the gaming world, there’s a trope in a lot of JRPGs where a young boy goes on a seemingly innocuous adventure only to find himself the one remaining person to resist an unfathomable evil force. I like it and it feels nostalgic to me, so to see the pattern playing out in Stone Serpent has an odd satisfaction for me. Dineen transitions beautifully from a lighthearted call to adventure to an ominous and suspenseful register as Ta and Lu approach some ruins. Ta feels himself being called, drawn deeper into the ruins. I’ll avoid spoiling too much, but the dramatic irony where the audience knows that things aren’t right while Ta follows his intuition builds a great sense of dread. There’s a further double-down on the disaster, but again I won’t spoil too much.

The second phase of the book transitions to a group of other characters—Balkash, Naas, and Hong. Dineen again provides some compelling backstory for the characters and helps to establish their milieu. We see the contrasting philosophies of different people in the world and we see the ‘big city’ context and the exploitation of workers and the group quickly runs into trouble, being transported by boat to their execution. The chapter feels bleak and again there’s a great tension as they come to face-to-face with their cruel executioner.

Around this time, things start getting really interesting for my favourite character in the novel, if for no other reason than his philosophical potential. I may not get this description exactly right, but Polliss is a humanoid feline mage who, thanks to a crushable figurine, can teleport out of danger to a destination not entirely of his will. What I find most interesting about the character, though, is the transience of his identity. Polliss essentially serves as a host for the phoenix Baal, a judgmental companion that speaks directly into Polliss’ mind. There’s a lot of opportunity there to explore what it means to be an individual when constantly hosting another consciousness—this becomes even more complex when Polliss is embodied inside another man’s corpse. Essentially, it’s a body not his own, hosting a consciousness of his own, which itself hosts another consciousness not his own. It’s a rich concept that lands really nicely, especially when he’s considered in contrast to the animated statue villains, described as “soulless puppets of stone pulled by invisible strings.” It’s interesting to see the contrast of multiple consciousnesses crammed into one body in contrast to the animated stone, which seems to operate vaguely as one consciousness spread out between many bodies. There’s a lot to work with here in terms of identity, consciousness, and we could even draw parallels with discourses as diverse as psychoanalysis, trans identities, or computer networking.

The novel operates within an apocalyptic mode, where a godlike snake-man is unleashing unheard-of magic. At his introduction, people are transformed into stone and then reanimated as malicious statues hunting the survivors. Beyond that, much of the book actually presents the environment as the primary threat to survival: the natural world is warping and becoming overgrown. As the story progresses, the party expands and each character has a role to play in surviving and saving the world. I was actually hoping for a bit more of Ta throughout the main body of the text (and more episodes with the central villains to explore their motivations) but there’s enough variety and differentiation between the other sets of characters to keep the story moving. That approach is particularly true for chapter 36, where different storylines are woven together in short bursts, making the chapter feel lively and giving the story a satisfying cohesiveness.

The novel has a balance of action sequences and more meditative moments of connection between the characters. In the final act, there are some great developments with the characters’ relationships and that makes the ending of the book all the more devastating. I admit that I either forgot or didn’t realize that Stone Serpent is the opening of a new series, so as I saw the ending creeping closer I felt the dread of irresolution. Even so, the ending of the book is powerful—but not for the reasons I expected. The book’s early lightheartedness, by the end, has clearly transformed to a more somber tone. There are some painful losses and one character proves himself such a spineless bastard that I can’t wait for him to get his comeuppance in the sequel. The emotional investment I felt in that betrayal is an excellent payoff which, upon review, was clearly foreshadowed and all the more satisfying for it. There’s a lot of dread permeating the end of the book and it was both refreshing and frustrating that the ‘good guys’ failed to have the upper hand.

Dineen’s writing, as I’ve alluded to, is nicely structured around the novel’s key moments. There’s a good build-up to the key plot points and the payoffs generally feel earned (there was one early one with Polliss crushing a statue, but something later in the book justified the moment retroactively). Dineen’s use of strong phrases also gives the work its force. Sometimes, they are phrases embedded in paragraphs to build the moment, like “reality held its breath.” Sometimes, there are standalone lines that punctuate the moment by being their own paragraph. In a moment when characters are forced to keep their heads down and row, and then the following paragraph is simply: “the lash would do the rest.” I’ve alluded already to the imagery like a “dense canopy permitting only token seams of light.” There are lots of lines to like that help enrich the overall project.

I’ve barely scratched the surface of Stone Serpent. There are more characters and more moments than I could possibly cover here—and I wouldn’t want to give away all the key surprises here, anyway.

After all, Tristan Dineen is hosting a launch for the book on June 25th at 7p.m. at Red Brick Cafe in Guelph. You could pick up your copy of Stone Serpent and hopefully take a few moments to engage with its author.

Happy reading!

courbure de la terre par jonas fortier

  My reviews of French poetry books are always the most niche, but at least once a year I try to expand my horizons and practice my second language…so here we go with courbure de la terre par jonas fortier.

courbure de la terre essentially translates to “curvature of the earth.” The title feels appropriate not only because so many of the poems feature round elements, curves along the horizon, but because there’s something about the tone of the poems that also feels soft. fortier is not a writer of hard edges but of gentle invitations. The poet takes on a mode that feels like some early French symbolists, drawing inspiration from things like the moon or rain drops and finding the deeper significance that is sometimes unspeakable.

There’s a layer of irony to me making that statement, though. There’s a sequence of poems in which fortier reflects on writing directly and provides a list of the types of poet he is not, outlining both motivations and processes for writing. He’s not a poet that works in a factory in unimaginable conditions; he’s not the poet that stays up all night and kills himself at twenty three. These tropes of the depressive and the isolated don’t reflect him, so while there are some symbols that are resonant with classic poetry, he still distances himself from their tradition.

I appreciate the art of quiet poems. fortier has a real observational quality in his work, rendering clouds and rain drops into art. The poem sequences are often untitled, and it blurs the line between individual poems and sequences of connected pieces, but the section <<Le sommeil est le neveu de la mort>> contains a piece that feels representative of the precise quality of fortier’s style. The piece reads, in part, as follows:

cette peine-là
est de saison, brume
démanchée contre le ciel
il se met à pleuvoir de minuscules araignées
des étoiles comme nous mais mieux
des gouttelettes encore poudreuses
comme des briques muettes
des flèches d’averse
viennent crever dans nos bras faibles
et nous portons à nos lèvres
des souvenirs d’herbes (54)

The description has that touch of tenderness and devastation that characterizes what I often think about in terms of a “poetic mode.” I particularly appreciate the rain being described like tiny spiders, rendering the droplets somewhat creepy, but also as stars “like us but better.” The line breaks sometimes make the lines read ambiguously, but the poem goes on to describe the droplets like falling arrows or bricks and there’s a heaviness there that counterbalances the softness of the powdery rain drops.

The section <<Vérités permanentes>> has some of my favourite pieces, which extend fortier’s motifs about the sky and clouds. In one piece, the speaker identifies himself and another (<<nous>>) as parallel to clouds, carrying the names of their fathers and the clothes of their mothers and big beards that have grown over time and having bodies like grapes where you can’t see inside. The poem’s volta explores a new angle and fortier explores the future, made of houses with hard planks that speak as you step on them. He talks about the opening of the house, the opening of the future, letting the wind speak through open doors and windows. The poem ends on the idea of the moon guiding people to the house alongside thin, key-like trees. It reads better in French: <<d’arbres minces / comme des clés>> (62). The extended metaphor works beautifully and mimics fortier’s approach: you are being trained as a reader how to listen to space, how to hear messages from your environment. It’s hard to translate here but there’s also an aural quality to the work, where particular sounds echo with a slight difference: dures / dureté, de soi / ce soir, and so on. These give the poem a coherence that feels like it touches on something other-worldly. 

The collection also reflects a fair deal on language itself. The section <<Vérités permanentes>> opens with a reflection on grammar:

il y a un temps
grammatical
qu’on appelle
vérité permanente

je n’en avais jamais entendu parler
jusqu’à ce qu’un Bescherelle
me révèle son nom

c’est arrivé par surprise
comme la lettre d’un ami cher
après des années passées
dans la contemplation
d’un pays lointain

j’ai eu une émotion très positive
bien que si proche de la tristesse
en apprenant que la vérité
peut être temps présent (59)

There’s a nostalgia to the piece that resonated with me, namely the idea of learning grammar from a Bescherelle (French Immersion kids represent!). I like, too, the sense of revelation that studying grammar brings and the reality that opens up. I also appreciate the tenuousness of the border between positive emotions and sadness and the way those converge at moments of clarity.

I can’t pretend that I understood the nuances of each of the poems in this collection. I do feel that the tone read as tender and a little tragic, but reflective and appreciative of the world. I flagged one of the early poems in the collection because I felt I didn’t have the vocabulary to really delve in. As I translated it a little more, the imagery stood out more dramatically: it was about kids “chained to strollers” watching birds and knowing that life is invented by the spirits of our dead, who have become <<essaims d’abeilles>> (24)—that is, swarms of bees. The poem took on a new philosophic intensity and then becomes a reflection on time reflected in the northern hemisphere collapsing like wet butter on the sidewalk. 

Another piece I revisited reinforced the idea of the poet as a wanderer. I’m tempted to put him alongside Baudelaire as a flanneur, but I’ll resist easy categorization. Essentially, there’s a poem about wandering but then clinging to certain phenomena, including the increasingly strange—like urine accumulating in ant nests (37). There’s an endless searching and a turning up of the speaker’s eyes to the stars…but we’d call them eggs (37). It’s an odd line to end on, a bit of cheekiness that I feel undermines the self-seriousness of the wandering poet’s approach.

Returning to the section <<Le sommeil est le neveu de la mort>>, there’s a piece that ties these elements together. There’s a roundness to the piece, the observational quality, and the sense of wandering and searching that fortier highlights. The poem has a simplicity to it: it lists different types of droplets—respiration, cuts and injuries, brilliant drops (52). The poet rolls like a dice all while marching on, ready to scale mountains and appreciating the thyme growing at the side of the sidewalk.

I admit I’m not the perfect audience for this book; I appreciate the language, but am not apt enough to appreciate its nuances and possibilities. The poems felt tender and beautiful and quiet, with flashes of the philosophical, which I tend to enjoy. It’s a nice collection and if you’re a reader of French, I’d love to hear you extend the conversation.

Happy reading!