O sujeito cerebral e o movimento da neurodiversidade

Abstract

This article analyzes the neurodiversity movement, organized mostly by so-called high-functioning autists, who consider that autism is not a disease to be treated, but rather a human difference that should be respected alongside other differences. The "neurodiversity" movement must be set within a wider sociocultural and historical field that incorporates the growing impact of neuroscientific knowledge and practices in the cultural imagination with the paradigm of the cerebral subject and the expansion of neuroculture. In the context of the cerebral subject, the brain accounts for all that we used to attribute to the person, and it is becoming a fundamental criterion for biosocial grouping. The article shows how a solipsist, reductionist and scientificist ideology - the cerebral subject - can act as the basis for the formation of identity and networks of sociability and community. © 2009 Mana.