‘How do I know how I think, until I see what I say?’: The shape of embodied thinking, neurodiversity, first-person methodology

Abstract

I discuss what it’s like to engage in an embodied/enactive creative practice, its qualities and values, and how neurodiversity might benefit research culture. As an Asperger’s thinker with a creative, metacognitive thinking style, I have reached a point of asking through my art practice, How do I make my cognitive difference visible? Referring to my keynote presentation at the 2019 Body of Knowledge Conference, which was both an installation and a conversation about growing into the need for practice, this article takes the reader through the evolution of my thinking about practice as personal growth, to the point of commencing a new project, Making Autistic Thinking Visible. These findings suggest that there is need for research methodologies to be led and developed by different thinking styles, based in self-awareness, including the ‘internal participatory’ research model I suggest. My example contributes to a bigger picture of diversity in human cognitive variation, that can contribute to a more inclusive (consequently expansive) research culture, displacing standard norms which kill possibilities for different forms of knowledge.