Neurodivergence, Embodiment, Empowerment, Pathography: Expressions from the Margins

Abstract

Abstract G. Thomas Couser (1997:533) asserts in “Disability, Life Narrative, and Representation,” “The autobiographical act models the agency and self-determination the disability rights movement has fought for....” With autoethnographical prose, focusing on individual and community psychosocial implications of trauma, the paper offers story and analysis centered on embodied experience. This paper grounds lived experience of severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) with a lens of de-medicalizing disability. This paper provides windows on largely hidden and little understood forms of impairment from a frequently marginalized individual. The paper examines the experiences of a severe TBI survivor by exploring the temporal dissonance of impaired cognitive processing. The paper uses pathography to give emphasis to relevant Critical Disability Studies and Critical Trauma Studies scholarship. The paper explores how the intersections of living with multiple impairments (disabilities) while pursuing autoethnography as an unaffiliated researcher strengthens disabled identity, empowers the drive for self-determination, and provides agency to assert oneself politically to better reduce stigma and minimize oppression by the dominant culture. This paper examines the confluence of composing personal experiences of severe TBI survival with Disability Studies scholarship that promotes centering of self and (re)creating identity.