Neuroqueering the Witch Brain : Identity at the Intersections

The performative embodiment of my intersecting identities – an autistic, feminist, cishet mestiza – emerges from the multifaceted and subversive ways in which my brain is wired; those swirly neuro-pathways, which appear dancing before me in the form of enchanted (sometimes frightening, sometimes lavishly delicious) passages, avenues, corners, stairways, niches, and rabbit-holes – permeate all areas of my brain.

My friend, Nick Walker (neurocospolitanism.com), who recently spoke so beautifully about the art of neuroqueering the Soma, or the ‘rebellious embodiment of the psyche’, really brought it home for me. The ways in which I both think about and incorporate ritual and magic into my everyday – as movement and as flow, as sensory experience and as Quila – intersect with the provocative perspectives introduced by autonomous marxist feminist Silvia Federici in works such as ‘Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation’ (2004). In her work, Federici discusses the socio-economic aspects behind the European Witch Hunts in the early stages of Capitalism, among other themes. Influenced by this, and other feminist works, I use this blog as a space in which to discuss neurodiversity, witchery and self-governance. To do so, I also trace and excavate ways in which marginalized identities such as the witch, the insane, the hysteric, and the feminist are socially produced and culturally consumed. I use said constructions to amplify some of the avenues for resistance employed by women deemed ‘deviant’, ‘evil’ or ‘insane’ and to negotiate the sterile grounds of Western capitalist normativity . In short, I invite an exploration into the spaces of political and ethical incantation through the lens of bodily insurgence – now and then.