Upon being diagnosed with autism back in 2023, I was struck by the two distinct reactions I encountered, which I label (a) the pathology narrative and (b) the superpower narrative. Both attitudes came from well-meaning friends and family members, yet they inexplicably unsettled me, as the reasons behind my discomfort were not fully intelligible at the time. Examples of the pathology narrative included exclamations such as “the diagnosis must be wrong, there is nothing wrong with you” and the somewhat misleading advice to “not let my autism define me.” Although those specific instances stemmed from a misguided desire to be supportive, the former framed my minority cognitive style as inherently inferior, and the latter entailed the hidden assumption that my autism was inessential to who I am. Such advice did not feel applicable to neurodivergence, which constitutes pervasive neurological difference, a different way of experiencing the world rather than a detachable trait. Telling an autistic person not to let their condition define them reduces their neurology to an accessory.
The pathology narrative felt demeaning and contradicted my personal experience and self-perception, leading me to seek out alternative views, which is when I encountered the superpower narrative. This reaction aimed to counteract the harm of the pathology narrative by presenting autism as a blessing in disguise; a set of favorable cognitive resources that simply need to be leveraged, rendering the autistic person an asset to dominant speakers. This reaction felt unsatisfactory, as it assumed homogeneity among autistic people, making me feel guilty for needing support despite the “superpower.” Fricker’s account of epistemic injustice resulting from a prejudicial credibility deficit and Davis’s expansion of testimonial injustice to include cases of prejudicial credibility excess jointly provided the conceptual framework for verbalizing my discomfort and experiences. Davis already recognizes that “credibility excess often operates alongside credibility deficit to define the social, epistemic, and professional realities of marginalized individuals,” but neurodivergence shows how they operate simultaneously through competing social narratives, highlighting the importance of Davis’s call to cultivate sensitivity to the multiplicity of epistemic injustice.
According to Fricker, epistemic injustice occurs when “someone is wronged specifically in their capacity as a knower, wronged therefore in a capacity essential to human value.” This means, as Chapman and Carel put it, that their status as knowers, interpreters, and providers of information is unduly diminished, undermining their agency, credibility and dignity. Fricker identifies two main forms of epistemic injustice: (a) testimonial injustice, wherein the epistemic agent speaks but is not believed, and (b) hermeneutical injustice, wherein the agent cannot properly articulate their experience, as it is obscured by gaps or distortions in a community’s shared interpretive resources. Importantly, she maintains that a speaker is a victim of testimonial injustice “if and only if she receives a credibility deficit owing to identity prejudice in the hearer.”
In the context of neurodivergence, the pathology narrative entails an identity-prejudicial credibility deficit resulting in testimonial injustice, as it assumes that a deviation from a perceived cognitive norm (defined by dominant speakers/thinkers) constitutes a deficit harmful to the individual, and that perception naturally undermines the credibility of anyone who falls outside of this norm. To illustrate what a neurodivergence-specific case of prejudicial credibility deficit might look like in action, take the misconception that autistic people “lack empathy,” often stemming from confusion between affective empathy—the ability to viscerally share the emotions of other people, and cognitive empathy—the ability to rationally understand a person’s mental state and perspective. Now consider the following scenario:
An autistic woman is catching up with her allistic friend. The friend confides in her about feeling upset because several colleagues went out for drinks after work without inviting her. The autistic woman viscerally empathizes with her distress (affective empathy), but struggles to understand the precise source of hurt, especially given that her friend does not drink (cognitive empathy). She tells her friend she shares her distress but asks her to explain why the situation felt upsetting to her so she can better comfort her. Yet the friend interprets this request as an attempt to invalidate or minimize her experience, reinforcing her belief that the autistic woman does not care about others’ mental states.
Since the existing stereotype undermines the autistic speaker’s credibility as an interpreter of emotional situations, her intentions behind requesting clarification are not understood, and she is not believed when she says she shares her friend’s distress.
The superpower narrative, however, does not fit within Fricker’s framework of epistemic injustice, despite resulting in clear harms to autistic people. This is where Davis’s expansion of epistemic injustice to include cases of identity-prejudicial credibility excess (hereafter PCE) becomes crucial. Fricker states that “while credibility excess may (unusually) be disadvantageous in various ways, it does not undermine, insult, or otherwise withhold a proper respect for the speaker qua subject of knowledge,” thus causing them “no epistemic injustice.” By contrast, Davis claims that “PCE is motivated by an ethically flawed affective investment—namely, an inability or unwillingness to recognize the individuality (intellectual, experiential, and so on) of members of the same social group.” He aptly refers to this phenomenon as “typecasting syndrome,” noting that such assessments do, in fact, interfere with the transmission of knowledge and signify a disregard for the speaker as an epistemic subject.
Fricker concludes that the primary harm of testimonial injustice is being relegated from the status of epistemic subject to object. Pohlhaus believes that the harm instead lies in relegating the speaker to the status of “other,” wherein one is discredited and/or silenced when the information one contributes “moves beyond the scope of the world experienced from dominant subject positions.” Davis maintains that neither account fully captures the harm of PCE, the primary harm of which is only being “permitted (and expected to) contribute in ways that are considered ‘unique’ and ‘distinct,’” calling this the harm of compulsory representation. However, the phenomena of epistemic othering and compulsory representation are not necessarily mutually exclusive—an autistic’s person value is often seen to possess epistemically distinct experiences and “superpowers” (skills intrinsic to the identity aspect) and yet simultaneously reduced to the “other” and expected to enrich but not challenge the established status quo.
A classic neurodivergence-specific example of PCE is the representation of autistic people in the film Rain Man, starring Dustin Hoffman as an autistic savant. While this may seem like positive representation on the surface, many autistic people felt the stereotype resulted in increased pressure on them to demonstrate a unique ability so as not to disappoint, inadvertently tipping the superpower narrative from a compliment to a dehumanizing stereotype. Such PCE representations fuel media narratives about autistic “superpowers” presented uncritically and homogeneously. This leaves neurodivergent people susceptible to being denied the support they need, as it creates the impression that a different outlook on the traits that define them somehow cancels out their need for support in an ableist society.
The false binary narratives of either “superpower” or “pathology” implicitly results in hermeneutical injustice as well. Putting aside barriers to diagnosis, if these are the only narratives available and neither fits one’s experience and self-perception, one risks internalizing one (or both) of these narratives even upon being diagnosed. This would in turn inevitably impact one’s ability to articulate and interpret one’s experience, as such internalization may, in the words of Davis, cause one “to react in potentially harmful ways—including (but not limited to) self-imposed silencing or distancing herself from epistemic engagements.” This form of epistemic injustice is therefore also a result of excess, but in this case it is due to what Dular terms hermeneutical excess—obscuring agents’ understanding of the lived experiences of marginalized groups by introducing additional concepts into our collective hermeneutical resources.
The dual nature of neurodivergence as cases of both credibility deficit and excess raises two issues relevant to the debate on epistemic injustice. While Davis notes that prejudicial credibility excess often accompanies credibility deficit, the case of neurodivergence suggests that they may emerge simultaneously through competing social narratives, as illustrated through the pathology and superpower narratives. This invites further investigation into the relationship between these two credibility distortions and raises the question of whether they are more structurally intertwined than current accounts acknowledge. Moreover, the persistence of these narratives suggests that epistemic injustices affecting neurodivergent individuals may be embedded within broader structures. Scholarship suggests that the pathology narrative reflects elements of the medical model of disability and longstanding assumptions about cognitive normality, while the superpower narrative may be reinforced by socio-economic frameworks—such as capitalist valuations of productivity—that incentivize viewing neurodivergence primarily in terms of exceptional ability and economic utility.
Although these issues extend beyond this reflection, it is clear that cultivating a sensitivity to the multiplicity of epistemic injustice as a potentially complex interplay between testimonial injustice, hermeneutical injustice, credibility excess, and credibility deficit is indeed an epistemically responsible approach if one wishes to avoid the pitfall of creating a false binary between a pathology narrative—which risks obstructing credibility—and a superpower narrative—which risks obstructing support needs and reinforcing broader structural injustices. This reinforces Davis’s claim that “our theoretical conceptions of epistemic injustice shape the hermeneutical resources with which our experiences are understood,” and we must “ensure that we do not delimit the concept too rigidly.”
Agata Mala
Agata Mala is a political theory postgraduate student at Oxford University as well as Research Coordinator for Mad+Bad+Sad, an interdisciplinary research group on mental health, disability, and neurodivergence. She is interested in political philosophy—particularly democracy, justice, and recognition theory—and its intersections with epistemology, philosophy of psychiatry, and philosophy of AI.
