Empire of Normality

The vast majority of this book is devoted to the history of how neurodiversity was understood in the West, and those parts of the book are exceptional. Chapman goes through the importance of technological and scientific developments in driving a new societal understanding of human difference (unsurprisingly Galton and statistics make a central appearance). This continues into the 20th century, with the intersection of the anti-psychology movement and the rise of neoliberalism conspiring to push fundamentally social issues entirely onto individuals.

It's in the portions of this book that veer into political economy that the wheels fall off. As with most philosophers, Chapman routinely conflates capitalism with neoliberalism and expounds at length using logical arguments for what are fundamentally empirical questions (e.g. does working more flexible hours impair mental health). If you ignore these deeply flawed sections, however, it's an excellent book. Highly recommend

Framing the history of psychiatric definitions of normality in their origins of eugenics, racism, and capitalist to neoliberal emphasis on individual ranking and pathologizing of the ab-normal. Rounds it out with a broad view of the neurodiversity movement in response to the mass-disabling of round-the-clock capitalist consumerist desires and inequalities.

This book hit very close to home, both on a professional and personal level. Chapman provides a great overview over the historical forces that shape neoliberal capitalism in the 21st century and how the "Empire of Normality" co-evolved alongside it thanks to eugenics and how an increasingly narrow definition of what is "normal" is shaped by capitalist production.

As @pdotb@wyrms.de outlined in their review, the concluding chapters into a way forward are quite broad, but dismantling neoliberal capitalism & "neuro-thatcherism" are grantedly quite big and in a sense far beyond the scope of what one book can provide.

Interesting stuff on eugenics, the anti-psychiatry movement and particularly its links with libertarian thinking, the history of neurodiversity, and the way disability and capitalism interact. The concluding chapter or two felt like an attempt to sketch out a way forward, but seemed a little too tentative for me.