Authoring Autism: On Rhetoric and Neurological Queerness (Thought in the Act)

Product Information

Kate Fox in her collection The Oscillations says that many of her poems in the collection ‘touch on neurodiversity – the idea that, as in biodiversity, there is a strength in the differences of people with conditions such as autism and ADHD who think and experience the world differently’. (2020, p69). In this post, I write with a similar emphasis on some of the perceived strengths and differences of neurodivergent writers. ‘Diagnosing’ autistic writers?

Writing this review as a queer autistic person. Was recommended this, and I feel really iffy about it. I am uncertain about the "academization" of the word "queer," for one, which did not help my opinion on the book. Personally, I do not find the academization of "queer" appropriate, as I think it takes away from the suffering associated with the word. But that's another debate. Fox also shows an affinity with animals in the poem ‘Cetaceous’ (2021, p.54): ’but you make me fluid/as you navigate through the murk/with senses I didn’t know existed/weaving sky into sea/sound into sight’. This beautiful phrase combines the wonder of this encounter and its impact on the narrator, and suggests the writer has the ability to understand some of the diversity of communication in the natural world. There is also a kind of synaesthesia of the senses in which they communicate with each other, e.g. sound is woven into sight. Joanne Limburg: Uncovering neurotypical ‘rules’

Customer reviews

Melanie Yergeau and Julia Miele Rodas have written that book I dreamed of a decade ago, but they’ve written it independently, as two books. Both writers start by challenging the premise that autism—as an intellectual concept and as a personal diagnosis—is antithetical to speech, rhetoric, and literature. Savarese’s See It Feelingly: Classic Novels, Autistic Readers, and the Schooling of a No-Good English Professor is a different project altogether, although it shares with Rodas’s and Yergeau’s a desire to grab us by the lapels and make us understand the wonderful, complex, and neuroqueer relations between autism and literature. It is a qualitative ethnography of five autistic readers and their experiences reading various texts with Savarese (remotely, by phone or Skype). The heart of the book lies in two chapters, one on cyberpunk writer Dora Raymaker and the other on Temple Grandin. The neologism ‘neuroqueer’ denotes the intersection of neurodiverse and gender nonconforming identities. It draws some of its power, as Yergeau points out, from the horrible fact that the punitive measures used to ‘treat’ autism, known as Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA), have much in common with, and were codeveloped with, treatments for gay conversion therapy; Yergeau notes also that in recent decades, Didier Houzel and Lesley Maroni have suggested that ‘autism is a primordial bisexuality.’ Mollie Russell (2020). ‘My Nephew’s Second Birthday: A Saga of Self-Stimulatory Behaviour’ (poem). Published in The Emma Press Anthology of Illness. The Emma Press. An affinity with animals and nature can also bring with it an appreciation of the subtler aspects of the senses. Some autistic people have heightened sensory experiences. Rhiannon describes ‘over-responsive’ and ‘under-responsive’ sensory profiles (2020, p28). For example, ‘over-responsive’ individuals might experience an increased sensitivity to senses such as sound or light, while ‘under-responsive’ individuals might seek out sensory experiences like loud noise (p28). While being ‘over-responsive’, or very sensitive, may be uncomfortable or even overwhelming, it can also be seen as a huge strength in a writer, who can then write about things on a more subtle level of detail.

Krumins notes that others viewed her communion with an among things as a young girl being unladylike rather than a young girl being autistic. Cisnormativity governs autism's diagnostic constructions. ... ABA is more aptly termed a sociosexual intervention than a mere social intervention, seeking as it does to make neuroqueer subjects virtually indistinguishable from their neurotypical, heterosexual, and cisgender peers. Becoming nonautistic is likewise becoming nonqueer-for anything that registers as socially deviant may fall under autism's purview." (p. 159)

Autism, I am suggesting, is a mode of becoming, is continuous motion that defies the clinical" (p. 43). Authoring Autism is a revolutionary book, a neuroqueer revelation. In many ways it is like other academic books, as Yergeau notes in a rueful footnote: “written for an academic audience—necessary in some ways, but quite exclusionary in most ways.” For instance, it includes sentences like “It is through rehabilitation that we can mete out our potential: elliptic stories suggest that the autistic is an entelechy of prosthesis.” 2 Autism disclosure is often agonistic, expectant of allistic refutation. The ability to say, "I have autism," for example, is often viewed as evidence that one does not have autism - or, at least, not real or severe autism." (p. 33)

The illogic runs as follows: if rhetoric is understood to be the social, public form of language, and if autism entails (among its many possible manifestations) the inability to read or perform “proper” social behavior, then there can be no such thing as a rhetorically skilled autistic speaker, an autistic rhetoric, an autistic literature. I’m an autistic academic, and my scholarly interests include rhetoric & writing studies, digital studies, queer rhetorics, disability studies, and theories of mind. My book, Authoring Autism: On Rhetoric and Neurological Queerness (Duke UP), is a winner of the 2017 Modern Language Association First Book Prize, the 2019 CCCC Lavender Rhetorics Book Award for Excellence in Queer Scholarship, and the 2019 Rhetoric Society of America Book Award. I am currently at work on a second book project on disability, techno-rhetorics, and sociality, tentatively titled Crip Data. My other publications can be found in Rhetoric Society Quarterly, Pedagogy, Journal of Social Philosophy, Kairos, Disability Studies Quarterly, and College English, among other places.

Publications

Design” and “Production” [two micro-essays]. (2015). Keywords in Writing Studies. Eds. Heilker and Vandenberg. Logan, UT: Utah State University Press. Savarese’s See It Feelingly: Classic Novels, Autistic Readers, and the Schooling of a No-Good English Professoris a different project altogether, although it shares with Rodas’s and Yergeau’s a desire to grab us by the lapels and make us understand the wonderful, complex, and neuroqueer relations between autism and literature. It is a qualitative ethnography of five autistic readers and their experiences reading various texts with Savarese (remotely, by phone or Skype). The heart of the book lies in two chapters, one on cyberpunk writer Dora Raymaker and the other on Temple Grandin. I did not read this like academic literature is meant to be read, studiously, looking up words I did not understand. I read it in a rush over the course of two days, skimming past the more horrific descriptions of medical abuse (in the name of curing autism), making my best guess at the meaning of some words and refusing to be troubled that I didn't understand others, taking away what I could. Interviews with Melanie Yergeau, Beth Ferri, and Nirmala Erevelles. Interviews conducted by Allison Hitt and Bre Garrett. Reflections: A Journal of Public Rhetoric, Civic Writing, and Service Learning, 14.1. 2014. 15-39. Other writing I love the detail in this, and the anthropomorphism of everything. Even the air is ‘as puffed out as the robin’s chest’, suggesting the pride and excitement of spring.