Blume? Singer? Or Turtles all the way down?

Spoiler: It really was me!

I refer to the scurrilous and erroneous trashtake of my work that the two most prominent academic Johnny-Come-Latelies to the Neurodiversity discourse managed to get past the eagle eyes of the esteemed journal Sage Publications Autism. I refer to Dr Robert J Chapman, Nick Walker, and their 4 devotees, who identify themselves as a group of “6 International Scholars of Neurodiversity”. For brevity I will refer to them as 'The Sage 6' or the '6 Contenders'

I begin on a far from trivial correction:

The Sage 6 are hardly “International” scholars.

(American + British) does not add up to “Internationality”

It adds up to North-Centrism
aka
Northern Hemisphere Cultural Hegemony

Quite an over reach, especially when the appear to have been unable to shake off the ingrained habits of British Colonialism and USA Cultural Imperialism

The 6 contenders rely heavily on two shaky platforms:

The, dare I say, resentful “evidence” of a non-scholar Martijn Dekker whose ignorance of academic process in the social sciences should be glaringly obvious to any academic. For Dekker's information, every academic thesis undergoes a comprehensive ethics review before acceptance. I have rebutted Dekker’s absurd confabulations here
A lot of freewheeling assumptions about the role of American freelance journalist Harvey Blume in the development of the term Neurodiversity, all of which can be traced back to the work of Wikipedia’s amateur “editors”

While we can blame Wikipedia and its amateurs, so much more culpable are any lazy academics who venture to use Wikipedia as a research authority, or even a research gateway.

I would hope the 6 academics have not been relying on Wikipedia's nameless and self-appointed northern "editors" given their dubious qualifications - assuming they even have any. Wikipedia’s scandal-snorting amateurs have been playing around with my entries for going on 3 decades now. I long ago gave up trying to set the record straight with them.

I cannot help wondering if it is completely beyond Wikipedia's amateur so-called "editors" to imagine that someone who is neither American nor Male can nevertheless be capable of coming up with a "Big Idea" all by ourselves!

Click to enlarge if not familiar
with the term

Reflexivity

BTW, academics working in the social sciences are required to practice reflexivity and question their own motives. I commend

this practice to the Sage 6.

Harvey Blume

If the authors had shown even a modicum of common sense, they might have made some pertinent enquiries. They might have found out that I corresponded with Harvey Blume for many years from 1997 onwards. Indeed I believe I shared this information years ago with Chapman. I have retained my correspondence with Blume, which shows, unsurprisingly, that he knew nothing about disability politics or the Social Model of Disability and learned the term "neurodiversity" from me. He wrote about it once or twice and never again. He did not cite me, nor as an op-ed writer did he need to. It didn't bother me in the least at the time, because who knew that 20 years later, the Neurodiversity movement I wanted to promote would actually go viral.

Transcript of correspondence with Blume in which I mention Neurodiversity prior to his being

''the first to publish''. I use it freely because I had already talked to him about it on the phone.

Where I said ''that I'm sure I coined Neurodiversity'' I also stated that the concept was probably''in the air'' aka the zeitgeist. I said the same thing in my thesis. All paradigm shifting ideas arise from the zeitgeist, but it takes a theorist to name, explicate and analyse them first. But I wasn't about to bignote myself then - nor did I ever dream that my idea would 'take off'. I make no apologies. I hope my contenders will not seize upon my reticence as they seized on a conversation I had with Jane Meyerding when I asked her if she had ever heard the term Neurodiversity. I asked her because she had been in the USA mainstream of the Autistic Self-Advocacy Movement long before me. I didn't want to claim the coinage until I was absolutely sure that the word didnt exist. I had exhausted all the resources of university libraries, the internet and never found it. Jane confirmed she had never come across it, which left me free to use and interpret it in my thesis. Notice that my defamers interpreted my correspondence with Jane in a twisted and mean-spirited way

It is frankly galling to find Blume getting equal billing with me in the history of the movement, when he was simply a freelance journalist specialising in interviewing literary figures, who wrote about ND once, picked my brain, and moved on to chase other rabbits.

Meanwhile, the development of this concept was my life's work, born out of great family hardship and struggle and my fortuitous discovery of Disability Studies. And it was NOT written just for the sake of catharsis, but also because I didn't want other families affected by Autism to have to endure the same.

Nor do journalistic ethics or the laws of defamation appear to daunt the Wikipedia crew. whose hogwash has been lapped up by my academic rivals. Hardly surprising, since they well know that defamation cases can only be afforded by corporations and billionaire

Envy

A little time-honoured Philosophy might assist them. Note the time-dishonoured sexism I have been forced to correct.

The final absurdity

How could this possibly have got past the learned editors of Sage Publications?

Having made up their minds that the term Neurodiversity could only be attributed to anyone else but me, my competitors came up with this gem of illogic.

Unless further archival evidence comes to light, it is possible we will never know who coined the term ‘neurodiversity’.

All I can say in reply to this absurdity is that if it wasn't me

then it could only have been coined by

'Turtles all the Way Down''

____________________________________________________________

And finally, a useful lesson from our ancient sages
tho I was forced to adapt it as below

_______________________________________________________

Bibliography

The Provenance of the Neurodiversity Concept
Judy Singer

*Thesis

Singer, J. (1998). Odd People In: The Birth of Community Amongst People on the “Autistic Spectrum”: a personal exploration of a New Social Movement based on Neurological Diversity. A thesis presented to the faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Arts Social Science (Honours), Faculty of Humanities and Social Science, University of Technology, Sydney, 1998. Submitted September 1998.

Book

Singer, J. (2016) NeuroDiversity: The birth of an idea. Kindle https://www.amazon.com/NeuroDiversity-Birth-Idea-Judy-Singer-ebook/dp/B01HY0QTEE/

Book Chapters

Singer, J. (1999). Why can't you be normal for once in your life?: From a 'Problem with No Name' to a new category of disability. In Corker, M. and French, S. (Eds.). Disability Discourse Open University Press UK https://www.worldcat.org/title/disability-discourse/oclc/39182312

Singer, J. (2002). When Cassandra was very very young. In Rodman, K. (Ed.) (2002) Is anybody listening? Jessica Kingsley Publishers, UK

Singer, J. (2003). Preface: Travels in Parallel Space: An Invitation. In Miller, J. K. (ed). Women from Another Planet? Our Lives in the Universe of Autism 1stBooks Library, New York

Singer, J. (2019) Reflections on the Neurodiversity Movement 20 years on. In Neurodiversity: 20th anniversary of the birth of the concept: Advocacy for positive recognition of human diversity and its future available https://www.etsy.com/ca-fr/listing/701221413/neurodiversity-20th-anniversary-of-the?

Translation available at La Neurodiversité - 20e anniversaire de la naissance d'un concept: Plaidoyer pour la reconnaissance positive de la diversité humaine et pour son avenir https://www.etsy.com/ca/listing/688599087/neurodiversity-20th-anniversary-of-the?

Government Publication

Singer, J. (2000). Disability Employment Services Information Kit. Department of Family and Community Services, Australian Government publication (Comprises 8 illustrated booklets, half in Easy English and half in Pictorial English, fact sheets and posters. 50,000 copies in print, distributed to every Disability Employment Service office in Australia)

Academic papers

Singer, J. (1999). No Longer Fair Game: Human Rights for Nerds, Weirdoes and Oddballs: The current situation of people with Autistic Spectrum Disorders in the NSW education system. A paper given at the 1999 Conference on Human Rights, Disability, and Education at the University of NSW.

Singer, J. (1999). Uncovering the Neurological Procrustean Bed. A paper given to the "Sydney Disability Research Network". University of Technology, Sydney

Singer, J. (1999). Voice and “Neurological Difference”. A seminar paper given to the "Sydney Disability Research Network" UTS

Satirical Pieces

Singer, J. (1998) NT Social Skills Deficiencies: A case study available archived online by Eric Engdahl at The Institute for the Study of the Neurologically Typical https://erikengdahl.se/autism/isnt/

Singer, J. (1998) What to do if you suspect your child has NT available archived online by Eric Engdahl at The Institute for the Study of the Neurologically Typical https://erikengdahl.se/autism/isnt/