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

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in the face of hegemonic schemas that pathologize and dehumanize autistics, it's worth insisting upon, but I did not appreciate parsing 250 pages of neologisms, jargon, and wordplay to get there. Project MUSE promotes the creation and dissemination of essential humanities and social science resources through collaboration with libraries, publishers, and scholars worldwide. Using a queer theory framework, Yergeau notes the stereotypes that deny autistic people their humanity and the chance to define themselves while also challenging cognitive studies scholarship and its reification of the neurological passivity of autistics. i only got 10 pages and the word "rhetoric" has lost all meaning i dont get what she means and i feel dumb for not understanding and the thought of trying to for another 200 pages sounds worst than death.

Yergeau wishes for us to embrace a future rhetoric full of tics and stims, and if this book is a glimpse of that future, it’s one every rhetorician should be advocating for. some interesting questions about the relations between autism and queerness are forestalled by yergeau's rather annoying tendency to fall back upon the academic appropriation of "queerness" as signifying something akin to différance that can be completely divorced from the realms of sexuality and gender. Yergeau’s book is a welcome history of autism and critique of contemporary perceptions and 'treatments' of it. While behaviorism makes no claim of cure, it does make claims of optimal outcomes, lessened severity, and residual (as opposed to full blown) disability, Recoverym then, is not the process of becoming straight or cisgender or nondisabled, but is rather the process of faking the becoming of normativity.Thus, in seeking to trouble the western-centric, ableist, heteronormative claims of rhetoric, Authoring Autism also disrupts conceptions of the normative human subject. Rather, it is to suggest that not only is autism a world (à la Sue Rubin), but that autism is a negotiation between rhetorical and arhetorical worlds. Also, as a person who uses a screen reader (because of autism-related visual processing issues), I found it bitterly ironic how poorly formatted this book was for those who use assistive technologies. For those not in the know, ASAB language was developed within the trans community to make it possible to refer to the sex/gender one had been assigned by society without having to make a statement about one's personal identity in the process. I am delighted to have learned so much about autism and behavioral development--two subjects I would not normally seek out.

In clinical settings, autistic practices are often better termed autistic symptoms, for when autism modifies practice, practice resides in the pathological. If this book is difficult for a well-educated person to understand it, I can only wonder how difficult it is for those who aren't as privileged as I am. Becoming nonautistic is likewise becoming nonqueer-for anything that registers as socially deviant may fall under autism's purview. I often had to pause and look up word-meanings and such (which is unusual for me to need to do), but it was 100% worth it and I'm planning to reread this book every year until I am unable to read. Yergeau's queered and disabled reading of rhetoric unfolds through many "in" sights into the dehumanizing gaze of pathological, clinical, and diagnostic renderings of autistic people.You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. it’s also just so upsetting to consider in such depth and with such rigor how the autistic is constructed in opposition to all that is human. Yegeau is thoughtful, a master of theory, and they address vital issues that are very rarely talked about, acknowledged, or understood. This, my body, this was autism - and suddenly, with the neuropsychologist's signature on my diagnostic papers, I was no longer my body's author. Authoring Autism" is the worst of academic writing, wherein simple observations and ideas are discussed with such virtuosic ambiguity that the author almost deserves credit for rendering language itself the direct enemy of communication.

This is without doubt the most thoroughgoing, rigorous, and creative work on authoring autism I have read. If you don't understand rhetoric, if you don't know queer theory, and even if you know nothing about disability studies - read it.I would consider myself educated; I'm in the first year of my masters degree at the time of writing this.

The introduction and the first two chapters are incredibly difficult to read, as Yergeau uses a lot of academic jargon and phrases I'd consider inaccessible. This is not to deny the existence of disability, nor is it to suggest that every autistic action is of necessity a symbolic, meaningful, or social move.She has a lovely way with irony that makes her points about theory of mind and empathy in autism superbly well. Not only does Yergeau do a fantastic job of giving you a well-rounded understanding of these issues by the end of the book, they make these issues important to you in a way they never were. and finally, she celebrates the autistic tendency to repeat gestures, words, routines, (echophenomenality) as akin to a kind of nietzschean joyous affirmation of eternal recurrence (without drawing the connection explicitly).