Constructing the neurotypical: the ascent of cognitive generalism in the late twentieth century

The term ‘neurotypical’ was coined by online autistic activists across the global north in the 1990s, primarily to refer to typically developed children and adults. Since then – in a relatively short period – it has been widely adopted in not just theory and activism but also in broader public discourses regarding education, media representations, public policy, and much else. Despite its increasingly wide usage, the concept itself has received only limited theoretical analysis. My aim here is to make sense of why this concept emerged when it did, and why it then came to be so widely embraced following the turn on the millennium. Employing a materialist model of disablement, I focus on how shifts from manufacturing towards emotional and cognitive labour led to the solidification of a generalist cognitive ideal in the late twentieth century, which in turn became even more restricted in recent decades. On this framing, neuronormativity is restricting – and to be neurotypical is not to possess any specific natural properties but to occupy a contingent material relation, for at least some phase of life.