Operatoric Research Corpus
Studies in World-Formation
Section IV
Neurodivergent Epistemology
Volume 8
Masking, Eigenzeit & Ontological Inoperability
The present volume brings together three contributions that address a fundamental question of neurodivergent existence: under which ontological conditions do the conflicts arise between neurodivergent forms of life and the institutional, diagnostic, and temporal structures of modern societies?
The point of departure is the observation that central phenomena in autism and neurodivergence research—such as masking, autistic burnout, or the frequent biographical breakdowns occurring under administrative and labour-market conditions—are predominantly interpreted as problems of individual adaptation. The contributions collected in this volume systematically challenge this perspective. Instead, they develop an ontological analysis in which the conflicts between neurodivergent and neurotypical forms of existence are understood as expressions of different structures of world-relation and world-binding.
The first contribution develops a theory of masking that understands it not primarily as a psychological strategy of adaptation, but as an ontological boundary process. Masking emerges where neurodivergent modes of world-relation—characterised by open, relational, and not fully objectified experiential fields—must enter social orders organised through simplification, representation, and stable role structures. In this context, masking appears both as a creative form of world mediation and as a potentially exhausting performance when such mediation becomes the permanent condition of social existence.
The second contribution analyses the diagnostic consequences of this constellation. It shows that psychiatric and clinical models frequently interpret masking as a symptom of over-adaptation or exhaustion and thereby produce a structural misreading. Autistic competence, stability, or situational adaptability are often diagnostically interpreted as deception or compensation, whereas autism becomes recognisable as “authentic” only in moments of overload, breakdown, or burnout. In this way, an iatrogenic dynamic emerges in which diagnostic recognition is effectively bound to visible failure.
The third contribution extends this analysis through a temporal and institutional perspective. With the concept of Eigenzeit, it shows that many conflicts in neurodivergent biographies arise not primarily from individual deficits, but from a structural incompatibility between forms of intensive world-binding and the time-administrative regimes of modern institutions. Procedures, deadlines, and organisational routines replace real world-binding with simulations of responsibility, thereby creating conditions under which highly bound forms of existence struggle to sustain stable life trajectories.
Taken together, the contributions develop a perspective in which neurodivergent existence does not appear as a deviation from a normative model of human subjectivity, but as an epistemic and ontological boundary case of modern societies. The conflicts analysed in this volume reveal that many institutional, diagnostic, and temporal orders rely on simplifications that systematically overstrain or render invisible more complex modes of world-relation. Neurodivergence thus emerges not only as an object of clinical description, but as an analytical entry point into fundamental questions concerning reality, responsibility, and the conditions of viable social orders.
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