Cinzia Greco: Divergent Feminism, Gebunden

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Divergent Feminism reimagines feminist analysis by placing divergent women at its heart, challenging exclusionary paradigms and advocating for a more inclusive understanding of gender and neurodiversity.

Women constitute the majority of those living with mental illness and diagnoses of neurodivergent conditions-once deemed predominantly male, such as autism and ADHD-are surging among girls and women. However, neurodivergent women and women experiencing mental illness have a marginal role not just in our society but also in feminist theory and practice. Divergent Feminism confronts this paradox.

Here, Greco situates neurodivergent women and those with mental illness within a changing landscape where complex, often uncertain neuroscientific knowledge, such as revised interpretations of autism or ADHD or new understandings of neural plasticity, collides with neoliberal pressures to conform to rigid norms of productivity and 'normalcy.' These forces redefine (a)normality, casting divergent women as both invisible and hyper-scrutinized, leading to their experiences being misdiagnosed or dismissed as personal failings. Drawing on a rich variety of documentary and digital sources-including medical texts, memoirs, social media advocacy, and TV representations-and informed by lived experience, this study unveils the social and cultural forces shaping divergent women's lives. It interrogates how feminist theory, often centred on normative experiences, can exclude those at its periphery, such as autistic women navigating masking or women with mental illness facing stigma.