Once a dissertation is accepted by an examining committee, and uploaded to the university library, that’s it–it’s been ‘published’ and I can’t change it. It’s been a few years since I wrote my dissertation, and in hindsight, there’s some things I wish I did differently. This blog post will briefly touch on a couple of the major issues I see with my dissertation.

1. I wasn’t fully cognizant of the richness of neurodiversity discourses back then. I was trained in critical theory, French and European philosophy, and medical sociology. I arrived at neurodiversity discourses at the end of my dissertation. I didn’t start with them. As a result, back when I was writing my dissertation, when I heard the term neurodiversity, my first thought was always, ‘oh that’s this buzzword that’s been appropriated by psychiatrists and corporations and other elites to try to pretend they’re accommodating us neurodiversity folk, when really they’re just pathologizing us with nicer sounding language.’ In other words, what I was really concerned about was the elite capture of neurodiversity, and the conceptual and political consequences of that for ADHD self-advocacy. I wish I had made that more clear in my dissertation. When I write that ADHD self-advocates have to be careful about neurodiversity, I mean they have to be careful about the elite capture of neurodiversity. To be clear, I do identify as neurodiverse, and I love so much of the contemporary work being done in neurodiversity studies.
2. A second flaw with my dissertation is that I took some shortcuts when it came to explaining why I think it’s important to sometimes theorize about ADHD as distinct from autism. My thinking has evolved a lot since I wrote my dissertation. My personal belief is that, in an ideal world, neurodiversity movements could hope to accomplish the neuroqueer future that Nick Walker talks about, which includes not only dismantling pathology paradigms, but also dismantling what they call neuroessentialism, such as thinking about things like ADHD and autism as distinct categories. Getting rid of that neuroessentialism and moving toward what they call neurofluidity, I think that’s what we want to accomplish in an ideal world, and I hope that we get there one day. The problem for me is that, given today’s political climates, I am skeptical that we’ll arrive at that ideal world anytime soon. This is why I write about ADHD in what I think some might consider a neuroessentialist way in my dissertation. I’m trying to find alternative approaches to doing ADHD-affirmative world-making–not as a replacement to other neurodiversity approaches, but in addition to them. I think coming up with a plurality of approaches is the best way of being prepared for unknown political futures. Unfortunately, in my rush to finish my dissertation, I took intellectual shortcuts to justify why I was trying to distinguish ADHD from autism, which I regret doing now. I wish I had taken more time to think through my intent and rationale for this project. But hindsight is 20/20.