The Arcadia Table: On Neurodivergent Form & Amateuring
This project is a working catalogue of neuro/queer approaches to form, valorizing hybridity, fascination, and abundance as core values. It starts with a celebration of an Autistic staple: the special interest, a radically earnest and completely undissuadable personal enthusiasm. When bundled with ADHD classics like the shifting hyperfixation, the infodump, and the sidequest, special interests can become plural and fecund for the AuDHD person. While this can at times lead to overwhelm and a dysregulating maximalism, it can also manifest in a highly pleasurable autodidacticism that we might call the form of amateuring.
Wending down the garden path of three of my own special interests—poetry, popular music, and gay/queer history and life—and activated by the hugely important work of José Esteban Muñoz and Carolyn Dinshaw, this presentation celebrates queer modes of being, making art, and synthesizing knowledge, rhapsodizing amateurism as a means to envision forms of neurodivergent utopia amidst a disabling world.
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.