Exploring the Implications of Melanie Yergeau’s Neuroqueer for Art Education

Yergeau’s concept of neurological queerness disrupts dominant cultural expectations of prosocial behaviors in the classroom, questioning how intention and sociality operate to remove the voices of neurodiverse individuals. Considering haptic engagement and material investigation in the arts classroom as potential sites for neurodiverse rhetorics to emerge challenges art educators to think about what access means within the classroom environment, as well as the narratives they ascribe to students’ asocial or antisocial behaviors. The neurologically queer have their own rhetorics of expression, which, if permitted to emerge within the arts classroom, create possibility for agency and expression. Art is a powerful rhetorical tool for self-advocacy and legibility, as it demonstrates what cannot be expressed through prosocial means. Counter-rhetorics of art and art making dismantle normative assumptions that privilege speaking and writing.