Neuroqueering fan studies: An autie-ethnography of fan fiction

Abstract

Although autistic and otherwise neurodivergent fans are numerous, fan studies has devoted little attention to them as a group. Neuroqueer offers a means of addressing this absence. At the theoretical intersection of neurodiversity and queer theory, neuroqueer allows for an expansion of fan studies' work on gender and sexual diversity to incorporate neurological difference. In addition to being sexually and socially queer, fan practices show strong resonances with contemporary scholarship on neuroqueer rhetorics, cognitive styles, and ways of being in the world. This autoethnographic account of one autistic fan's engagement with fan fiction illustrates how these fan practices might be read as neuroqueer and how such a reading builds upon previous understandings of queerness in fandom.