Coda

Abstract

Through a reading of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, this coda mounts a challenge to the claim that neurodiversity studies is a ‘new’ field. The coda uses the psychotherapeutic and psychoanalytic concept of ‘fundamental violence’ to challenge some rhetorics in the neurodiversity-studies field. It invites scholars working in this field, or thinking of doing so, to (re)consider what is at stake when we make claims to writing or publishing the ‘first’ texts in a new field, and attempt to trace the owners and originators of neurodiversity-studies terminology. The coda draws on critiques of neurodiversity as a white and Global Northern concept. The book ends by emphasising that as a field we best move forward together, offering each other mutual support, leaving nobody behind, and affirming that this field has space for us all.