The Arcadia Table: Notes Toward a Working Theory of Neurodivergent Form
This project is a catalogue of the modes and methods that neuro/queer people (both contemporaneously and throughout history) have used to break open or hybridize existing forms (of all kinds) in order to create new ones that better suit their purposes, especially as electrified by the AuDHD concepts of the special interest, hyperfixation, and infodumping. Working as a defiantly amateur researcher and deliberately lay scholar, and as a limitlessly fascinated, 70/30 ADHD/Autistic person, I’m keen to anatomize what neuro/queer form has looked like throughout history and now, as well as generate a working theory of how folks both neuro/queer and not can find liberation through fusing their specific, earnest and undissuadible enthusiasms with formal experimentation.
Embracing the gift of a hybrid neurodivergence, where ADHD blends with autism and breadth meets depth (to say nothing of the gifts of being queer), I’m bringing my dozen or so special interests to bear on a sidequest-laden, heavily footnoted and annotated project that values abundance, hybridity, and expansiveness as elemental virtues. Among the forms taxonomized and elucidated: the figure of the amateur (in particular the amateur botanist, medievalist, autodidact, outsider artist, and opera queen) run against the hegemony of professionalization and labor; the encyclopedia, the commonplace book, the cabinet of curiosities; hermits, anchoresses, Shakers, and other religious structures combining an element of asceticism with an element of creation; the essay form writ large, not least in the titanic figure of Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy; nonmonogamous queer relationships over the past century or so; and the commonality between jam bands, post-Coltrane jazz, and disco in modeling pleasurable techniques of improvisation, repetition, extension, and genre fusion.
Speaker
Rob Onorato, Director of Individual Giving at the Newberry Library
About Colloquium
Colloquium is a weekly series of talks featuring staff, fellows, and scholars who are working with the library’s vast collections. These events bring together experts from various fields to share their research on a wide range of topics, followed by an opportunity for the audience to ask questions and engage in conversation.
Colloquium is open to the public and offers a chance to explore fascinating ideas and new discoveries. No advance registration is required.