My commitment had a slow-motion feel to it. As it was happening, I couldn’t believe that it was happening — I was daydreaming, or I was watching a poorly written Lifetime biopic, or I had eaten moldy leftovers that triggered hallucinations, or something, anything but reality. But, no. This was my reality, and my reality soon spiraled into the progressive tense, into something like this:

– They were strapping me down on a gurney.

– They were wheeling me out of an academic building and into the parking lot, onlookers gawking.

– They were forcing me into an ambulance.

– They were dragging me, still on the gurney, into the psych ER, which resembled a TV prison — brisk security guards, cheap wall paint, steel-enforced doors, cameras that aren’t supposed to look like cameras but inevitably do look like cameras. They were dragging me in there. There.

– Soon, they were vigorously frisking me, and they were dumping out the contents of my backpack, and they were treating me like I was a criminal because I carried a bottle of Tylenol and a 3-inch autistic pride button, and they were shoving me, now shoeless and sweaterless, into a doorless room with hard-backed chairs, and they were prohibiting me from making any phone calls unless I did so via speakerphone, and they were threatening me with overnight and multiple-day stays and refusing to let me wear my headphones, and they were mixing up my diagnoses while periodically asking, How are you doing, sweetie? — As if they really cared. As if I were a sweetie.

Before the EMTs bundled me, pig-in-a-blanket style, into the ambulance, my former therapist asked me why being committed was such a “bad” thing. “If you have to ask that question,” I fumed, “then you really don’t have a clue.”

That pre-ambulance moment, to the best of my memory, is when their ventriloquism started. Suddenly, the experts claimed, I wasn’t talking. God, no. That’s your depression talking, they explained. That’s your autism talking. That’s your anxiety talking. Really, it’s anything but you talking.

Hours later, I sat in the psych ward, shaking, rocking, stimming, ticcing — anything to prevent epic meltdown mode.  I was disembodied. Objectified. Powerless. I was freezing, hunkered up against the wall in my new doorless home, watching an eight-year-old kid being forcibly removed from his parents. How do I not headbang? How do I not bite myself? How do they not see our humanity?

–

I have gotten used to not existing, rhetorically speaking. I study rhetoric for a living. I teach it. I have a PhD in it. I breathe it. Rhetoric is everything and everywhere, many of my colleagues say. The exception to rhetoric’s everythingness and everywhereness is, of course, autism.

I’ve reached a point in my adult life where articles on autism and perspective-taking inspire me — inspire me to commit self-injury, that is. Rhetoric is about audience and autism isn’t, these articles say. Autistic people are mindblind; autistic people are masked by a cloud of social solitude; autistic people are self-centered and shrouded by their neurological misery. I grossly paraphrase here, but not really.

And so, I have gotten used to not existing, rhetorically speaking. I will say something about autism, and someone will assert that nothing I’ve said matters or applies to anything. Because I’m self-centered. Because I don’t have the capacity to intuit other minds or understand others’ life experiences. Because it’s just my autism talking.

How can one have autism and have something to say? Autistic voice is the ultimate oxymoron. If they don’t want to hear it, then we haven’t spoken. We don’t matter because we don’t exist. We’re just a bunch of absent sweeties waiting to be strapped onto their gurneys.

That’s just your autism talking, they respond.

–

It is weeks later. I’ve been working, shaky and paranoid, scraping by in an already rough semester, a semester made rougher by male orderlies who find sensory overload amusing.

I am teaching a disability studies course, and it’s now November. We’re reading Dawn Prince-Hughes’ Songs of the Gorilla Nation, an autiebiography. I’ve never had a full class read it before, and I approach the class discussion with an excitement that I haven’t felt since my pre-commitment days.

Something transpires in this discussion, a something that jars me. Some of the students don’t think there’s a plot to Prince-Hughes’ book, that it’s too bogged down in details. Some of them wonder whether her autism made her write this way — some of them doubt her intentionality, her rhetoricity, her capacity to understand writing and audience and perspective-taking. In short, they wonder who’s really talking: Is it her or her autism?

I offer this moment not to reflect poorly on my students — my students are students, people who are kind, receptive, bright, and willing to learn. Rather, I offer this moment because it is iconic and pervasive, because students (and faculty, and parents, and clinicians, and, shit, most people) have learned this response from those who came before them. I offer this moment because I’m pissed off at those who taught them this. I offer this moment because, after it transpired, I flashbacked to my commitment and my forced disembodiment. I offer this moment because I am me, because I am an autistic me, because my autism is not a synonym for demon possession. I offer this moment because I locked myself in a bathroom stall and began cutting my leg with my 3-inch autistic pride button.

–

I recently dreamed that I was forced into a special education class for assistant professors, my 3-inch button affixed to my backpack, bloodstained and visible. This was a waking dream, an unrestful dream, a dream filled with groans and body twitches. The button was how I knew I had a body; the wakefulness was how I knew I had a voice.

But that’s probably just my autism talking.

My silence is, in fact, a compliment. It means that I am being my natural self. It means that I am comfortable around you, that I trust you enough to engage my way of knowing, my way of speaking and interacting.

When I dilute my silences with words — your words, the out-of-the-mouth and off-the-cuff kind — I often do so out of fear. Fear that my rhetorical commonplaces — the commonplaces that lie on my hands, sprint in my eyes, or sit nestled in empty sounds — will bring you shame. Fear that my ways of communicating will be branded as pathology, as aberrant, as not being communication at all. Fear that I will lose my job. Fear that I will lose your friendship, guidance, or interest in me. Fear that I’ll be institutionalized. Fear that I will be infantilized. Fear that I’ll be seen as less than human.

This isn’t to say that my use of your language is always a product of fear. There are times when I genuinely want to use it, understand it, and learn about and from it. I understand that speaking is how you prefer to communicate. I understand that speaking is how you best learn and interact. I understand that you take great joy in speaking and listening to others speak. And I do, I really do want to share in that joy.

But the burden can’t always rest on me. I have a language too, one that I take joy in, one that I want to share. And when you deny me that — when you identify my silence as a personality flaw, a detriment, a symptom, a form of selfishness, a matter in need of behavioral therapy or “scripting” lessons — when you do these things, you hurt me. You hurt me deeply. You deny me that which I need in order to find my way through this confusing, oppressive, neurotypical world.

My silence isn’t your silence. My silence is rich and meaningful. My silence is reflection, meditation, and processing. My silence is trust and comfort. My silence is a sensory carnival. My silence is brimming with the things and people around me — and only in that silence can I really know them, appreciate them, “speak” to them, and learn from them.

Speaking is an unnatural process for me. When socializing through speech, I will almost always be awkward, and I am OK with that awkwardness. In fact, I am learning to embrace that awkwardness, learning to reclaim and redefine that awkwardness. I am sorry you’re not OK with that, sorry that you feel I need to practice, or take anti-psychotics, or frequent the university hospital’s psych ward. I’m sorry that you won’t appreciate me for who I am and how I operate in the world. I’m sorry that I can no longer consider you an ally, confidante, or friend.

I'm not a checkbox in some symptom cluster. I'm a freaking human being.

Me holding a sign: "People not puzzles!"

I managed to maintain my composure throughout the protest, regardless of the insults thrown our way, regardless of the noise and clamor and overt hostility of the event. But then I came home and started sifting through an hour’s worth of video footage — and I broke down. Sobbing, shaking, rocking. It was so intense, all so intense.

I don’t want the next generation of autistic people to face this crap. I want it to be different for them. I want them to take pride in who they are as autistic people, and I want those who love them to take pride in who they are as autistic people. I want autistic ways of thinking, being, and knowing to be valued and validated. I want autistic people to have a say in the decisions that concern them.

And most importantly, I want there to be autistic people.

Video recaps of the protest:

Our protest attracted media attention from 10TV, ABC 6, and independent journalists. Even today — Wednesday, four days later — random strangers notice the Autistic Pride button on my backpack and exclaim, “Hey! I saw you on the news! You talked about where the money goes for that autism walk.” These things help — knowing that our four-hour ordeal has had some tangible effect, has furthered our cause.

We were featured on the ABC 6 news, and I provided a brief soundbite:

We also created our own video of the protest. Nick J. was our cameraman extraordinaire, and I did the editing. The video is still painful for me to watch — especially toward the end, while we’re chanting Autism Speaks needs to listen, and, in an alarming touch of irony, the walkers drown us out by collectively screaming O-H-I-O!

As I replay the clip, I have to cover my ears, tuck my chin down into my chest, breathe heavy. It is hard to watch, but it is a poignant example of Autism Speaks’ attempts to silence us, to refuse to listen to us, to never let autistics speak.

This post wouldn’t be complete without a thank you. Thank you. An incredible number of people, local and distant, helped us through this protest. And despite the protest’s emotional toll, perhaps even because of the protest’s emotional toll, I’m glad we did it. And I know that we need to continue doing it. Change is long and hard. But it’s happening.

Protesters face the crowd of walkers

]]> http://aspierhetor.com/2010/10/13/columbus-protest-against-autism-speaks/feed/ 10 http://aspierhetor.com/2009/01/25/autism-speaksu-initiative/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=autism-speaksu-initiative http://aspierhetor.com/2009/01/25/autism-speaksu-initiative/#comments Sun, 25 Jan 2009 20:48:19 +0000 Melanie http://aspierhetor.com/?p=171 Ugh.

Autism Speaks has launched a series of college/university chapters, a program that started at the beginning of the 2008-2009 school year. My university, Ohio State, is currently in the process of forming its own chapter. Over the past month, three people have tried to “recruit” me for it. My unabashed disgust for Autism Speaks notwithstanding, I think I’ve been tactful and rhetorically “appropriate” in my conversations with these people — conversations in which I’ve tried to communicate why Autism Speaks is a harmful organization. Unfortunately, my appeals have not been persuasive thus far.

In December, an NT grad student in the aspie group I belong to forwarded me a notice from the Autism Speaks faculty advisor. My grad student friend knows of my disdain for Autism Speaks and suggested I write the faculty advisor, or possibly consider joining the group to provide balance. I opted for letter-writing, of course, because in no way do I want to be affiliated with Autism Speaks. In my letter, I explained neurodiversity and Autism Speaks’ problematic foci on cure and prevention. The faculty advisor, in response, said that although she empathized with my position, the group would maintain the vision of Autism Speaks.

In the faculty advisor’s “defense,” I’m fairly certain that she was well-meaning in her statement and that she has nothing but so-called “good intentions” concerning her involvement with Autism Speaks. I think that many people involved with this organization, as harmfully misdirected as it is, have good intentions despite their woeful ignorance. However, the moment I saw the word empathize in her letter, something in me snapped. Obviously, she was not empathizing with me, and her remark came across as quite patronizing.

I’ve reached the point in life — in my growth as a person who has accepted and embraced being autistic — where the “good intentions” excuse just doesn’t cut it for me any more. If a bunch of autistic people are telling an organization that their group’s vision is hurtful, harmful, and unrepresentative, and they just keep chugging along obliviously, how does that make them well-intentioned? Or empathetic for that manner?

Empathy is such a charged, loaded word in autism discourse. By popular autism definitions, I am pathologically (and negatively) unempathetic. The inverse of this statement, if we herald the lovely NT/autistic binary that so many people love to herald, is that NTs are normatively (and positively) empathetic. Hence, the assumption is as follows: I can’t understand their minds or motives, but they can clearly understand mine, and, moreover, they’re so in tune with me that they understand my mind and motives better than I do. Empathy becomes the ultimate bodily displacement: the dominant discourse-wielders fit better in my shoes than I do.

In my graduate class on digital literacies, we’ve been exploring various research methods, one of which is discourse analysis. Our professor assigned us a book chapter by Thomas Huckin, “Critical Discourse Analysis and the Discourse of Condescension.” I’ve found myself employing his method of analysis on most everything I’ve read for the past five days — especially conversations concerning Autism Speaks’ role at my university. In his piece, Huckin shares correspondence between himself and a Utah state senator. Huckin wrote a letter in protest of the legislature’s plan to cut the higher education budget in order to fund highway construction (164). In response, the state senator used a sickeningly and politely patronizing tone, a tone Huckin defines as being discursively condescending:

“…the discourse of condescension has three main characteristics: First, it contains nothing overtly critical or negative, and often proffers insincere praise; second, it assumes a difference in status and worth between speaker and listener (cf. Goffman on ‘alignment’); and third, this assumed difference is disputed by the listener.” (167)

In the spirit of Huckin, I’d claim that the response I received — as well as Autism Speaks’ general behavior as an organization — is mired within a discourse of condescension. For example, in response to my embrace of a social approach toward disability, as well as the list of problems associated with Autism Speaks’ “vision,” the advisor wrote:

Thank you for your kindly worded letter.

[#1: polite praise of my original letter]

I am very familiar with this stance and I completely empathize with your perspective. However, this group will maintain the same standards and vision as that of Autism Speaks.

[#2: The power differentials are firmly rooted in an appeal to empathy. As described above, within the context of autism discourse, claims toward empathy invoke a rhetorical power play. She knows that, as an Asperger's autistic, I am supposedly "mindblind," and that, as a neurotypical, she supposedly has mental ESP. By invoking empathy, she dons discursive condescension and places her perspective regarding autism on a pedestal far above mine: she supposedly has the cognitive capacity to understand what it's like to be an autistic person who is continually told that she's an empty shell who's unworthy of existence, and, because she supposedly understands what it's like to be thought of as a mindblind, burdensome human being, she can segue into the "however" clause and uphold Autism Speaks' combative ideology.]

The letter goes on from here: she continued by saying that Autism Speaks was “moved” by the October 2008 campus walk, and she also expressed her desire for greater community involvement and “working together” with other campus autism groups. However, #3 arises in that I, as the recipient of this letter, dispute our postulated difference in “worth” as “functioning” humans — she asserts a hierarchy of empathetic worthiness; I don’t. In this letter, the writer employs rhetorical tools common to (neuro)typical autism discourse, and she employs those tools to make light of her opposition’s opinions and experiences.

I’ve noticed a lot of theoretical overlaps between the readings from my independent study on autistic narratives/rhetorics and the readings from my Race & Literacy course. All of these readings, whether implicitly or explicitly, deal with issues of representation and community, as well as issues of authorship and subjectivity. To borrow a question from Jacqueline Jones Royster, who can/should/does speak for/with/about whom?

Royster’s question seems especially pertinent in the writings and conference presentations of Paul Heilker, who, in claiming that autism is a rhetoric, is careful to delineate between autism communities and autistic communities — the former composed largely of parents and charities, the latter composed largely of individuals on the spectrum. These two communities, as one can probably gather from the unrelenting snark that has come to constitute my blog, are “warring” factions. Both claim representation rights; both claim to be voices of/for/with/about autism. The Autism Society of America claims to be the voice of autism; Autistics.org claims to be the real voice of autism (Heilker, CCCC 2008).

Interestingly, the primary audience of most large autism charities isn’t the autistic individual: by and large, their audience seems to include everyone but the autistic individual. Parents, teachers, supporters, doctors, researchers, students, any NT with spare pocket change — these are the bodies that such organizations strive to reach. Thus, ASA, for example, assumes its role as the voice of autism, rather than the autistic voice, because they imply that autistics, whether speaking or non-speaking, cannot autonomously self-advocate — for autistics to do so would go against the DSM IV criteria, or somesuch nonsense. Moreover, in highlighting autie and aspie testimonials on their home page, ASA suggests that individuals on the spectrum need an NT voice behind theirs in order to “function.” We autistics are high-functioning only inasmuch as we have NTs to brace us: note the lining up of ASD narratives next to narratives of NT mothers and NT speech pathologists. (Of course, I should here note that ASA is a lot more “ethical” in its operations and approach toward autistics than, say, Autism Speaks and other cure-autism conglomerates.)

Voice and representation are likewise large issues in writings that concern race and literacy. Morris Young, in Minor Re/Visions: Asian American Literacy Narratives as a Rhetoric of Citizenship, contends that the literacy narrative, as a genre, has the potential to allow Others to project their voices, to position themselves as individuals against their communities, to analyze the hegemonic functions of literacy, to “become minor” in the process of writing. The dominant theme in Young, as well as in John Duffy’s Writing from These Roots: Literacy in a Hmong-American Community, involves the relationship between self and society.

Autism is derived from the Greek word autos, which means self. Drs. Kanner, Asperger, and Bettelheim frequently described autistics as being inherently self-centered, trapped in their own worlds, imprisoned in their asocial bodies. Dr. Simon Baron-Cohen propels lack of theory of mind as an accurate description of autistic selfhood, this inability to empathize and recognize the intentions of others serving as a large marker of autistic existence. Ann Jurecic and Lisa Zunshine, both scholars in English Studies, also herald theory of mind in relation to autistic identity, bringing up issues of mindblindness and autistic egocentrism.

If autistics are seen as self-centered, self-absorbed, and self-isolating individuals, it’s little wonder that the idea of an autistic community — in contrast to an autism community — seems paradoxical. How can a bunch of self-absorbed selves form a community? How can a bunch of self-absorbed selves relate to a bunch of self-absorbed selves? How can a bunch of autos, autistic voices meld into a (semi)unified, real autistic voice?

I think it’s important to note that these questions largely stem from autism discourse, rather than autistic discourse, and perhaps this is why so many spectrumites loathe “person first” terminology, preferring “autistic” to “person with autism.” The phrase “person with autism” suggests that, should the autism be removed, a “real” person will emerge — without any trace of that asocial, autos garbage. It denies the intermingling of the autistic autos and bodily self. It denies the intermingling of autos and voice.

All of this rambling brings me back to the title of my post, to the idea of the self-indulgent narrative. In Literacies, Experiences, and Technologies, Sibylle Gruber writes,

I would like to argue that I don’t use the personal for capital investment, that I don’t use the personal as a mirror reflection of a self or culture, that I don’t slot myself or others as being able to speak for a group, and that I don’t disembody the personal…. But it is also important to acknowledge that personal narrative — or self-reflexivity — can become ‘self-indulgent or narcissistic’ …. In other words, despite conscious efforts not to use identity politics for individual gain, it is often difficult to escape the unconscious or subconscious tendencies to justify, defend, and promote an individual, albeit theoretically founded and supported, perspective. (22)

Throughout her book, Gruber positions herself, as a foreign researcher, in the contexts of those she researches. Gruber contends that personal biases are a real part of research, and she thusly justifies her use of personal narrative. Yet, she also fears narcissism, that her narratives about her ESL status are misplaced, autos-ridden tidbits of the personal.

Similarly, in “Tender Organs, Narcissism, and Identity Politics,” Tobin Siebers writes of the ways in which personal narratives of disability are often conflated with narcissism:

It is wrong to study what you are. (41)

But I also think that people with disabilities need to resist the suggestion that their personal stories are somehow more narcissistic than those of able-bodied people. If we cannot tell our stories because they reflect badly on our personalities or make other people queasy, the end result will be greater isolation. (50)

Now we of the tender organs need to introduce the reality of disability into the public imagination. And the only way to accomplish this task is to tell stories in a way that allows people without disabilities to recognize our reality and theirs as a common one. For only in this way will we be recognized politically. (51)

I worry that my writings about autism are, or will be, perceived as the self-indulgent, narcissistic writings of a pathological person with autism. As a I read over my previous post, a post that is rife with the personal, I wonder about what I should strive to be. Is this a personal blog or an academic blog? When the autism community reads my writing, do they immediately believe that I lack a theory of mind? Am I too autos for the masses — do I need to de-auticize myself in order to be seen as a voice of/for/with/about autism? In what ways can I be an autistic voice who writes for/with/about/to/at the voice of autism? How do we begin to bridge the realities of autistics into the public imagination of autism?

Paul Heilker and Jason King suggest that the end to the autism/autistic war — or, more likely, the beginnings of an autism/autistic truce — may involve Krista Ratcliffe’s concept of rhetorical listening. Rhetorical listening, unlike empathy, invokes understanding commonalities and differences. Ratcliffe claims that

understanding means listening to discourses not for intent but with intent — with the intent to understand not just the claims but the rhetorical negotiations of understanding as well. To clarify this process of understanding, rhetorical listeners might best invert the term understanding and define it as standing under, that is, consciously standing under discourses that surround us and others while consciously acknowledging all our particular — and very fluid — standpoints. (28)

Notably, Ratcliffe does not claim that the solution to life’s problems necessitates peeking into the mind of the Other. Rather, she stresses the necessity of difference, those autos features that particularize us as individuals.

I find it ironic that, in this discussion of the necessity of difference and personal narrative in disability writing, I haven’t been very personal. As a result, I now share this photograph, which is also meant to break up the textual monotony of my blog:

[A portion of my ELO collection: my perseveration of choice]

I don’t hate the book — but I don’t know that I like it, either. In fact, I don’t know how to respond to it. I feel as though I only know how to respond to the response to Haddon’s book. I don’t trust non-autistic audiences with it. And that statement of “trust” makes me feel sort of snobbish in a way, I suppose, but it comes from a very real place of hurt and frustration.

My first IRL, offline experience with Curious occurred prior to reading it. I was a Master’s student at the time, and I’d made the decision to tell no one of my Asperger’s. Instead, I went along with the imposed labels of shy and neurotic and OCD and friggin’ weird, man. (Any time someone hears me talk about ELO, they tend to walk away with the friggin’ weirds.) I was talking with a professor about teaching composition, and she started detailing some of the difficulties she’d encountered as an instructor, and some of those difficulties were students with LDs and ASDs. The moment I heard her mention Asperger’s, my head grew sort of faint, and I made the impulsive decision to come out. I started the coming out process by saying something to the effect of, “One of my teachers once suggested I had Asperger’s…”

She abruptly cut me off. You? Have Asperger’s? she balked. You’re such a good writer. You should take that comment as an insult.

I was completely taken aback, unsure of how to respond. At that moment, I suddenly didn’t want to be Aspergian any more — I was ashamed of myself, and I did my best throughout the rest of our conversation (or, rather, her conversation) to feign neurotypicality. As I turned to walk away, she suggested that I read Curious. I was obviously nothing like the main character in that book, and thus I couldn’t be autistic.

Fast-forward to the day when I was forced to read Curious. The book scared me. I knew I was about to enter into a non-autistic narrative of an autistic, and while I gathered that the author’s construction of Christopher wasn’t meant to essentialize spectrumites, it had nevertheless served an essentializing function for me. Moreover, I feared that, after reading it, I would begin to doubt my own diagnosis. Autism diagnosis is based on behavioral observations, and not on “objective” brain scans or blood tests. What if all of my doctors were idiots? Did they think that I was the female Christopher? Because I’m not the female Christopher, and if they thought that I was the female Christopher, then I would need a new neuropsych eval, post haste.

I hate that I have to defend my Asperger’s diagnosis to an uneducated public who refuses to be educated. I’ve been so brainwashed into being socially appropriate that the huge measures I take in order to appear neurotypical are largely invisible to the people I’m in contact with. Consequently, other than seeming weird or shy, I don’t seem to be much of anything. I’m certainly not the autistic who screams in supermarkets: I’m the autistic who mentally shuts down in supermarkets, the one who can’t talk to her husband by the time she reaches the produce aisle because the lights and noises have become one inseparable sense in her brain, the one who starts to taste sounds and choke on lights, the one who squeezes her arms and wrists so hard that they bruise, the one who is tiny, mute, and virtually invisible, like every good girl should be. I doubt I even know how to scream. If I can hear my voice, I think that others can hear it too, and I often talk in mumbles and whispers, unaware that I am talking in mumbles and whispers, unaware until someone briskly tells me to “speak up.”

Because I am silent and invisible, because I don’t fit the Christopher-esque mold, I have to defend myself and my diagnosis. And I realize that this isn’t the fault of Asperger’s: it’s how we think about Asperger’s, how we want to make neat little categories and stick to them.

Back to the book: When I first cracked open the seizure-red cover of Curious, I was immediately greeted with several book reviews, each of them sappy and gushy. I remember, upon reading them, having the instinctual desire to vomit.

Fast-forward to this week — two days ago, to be precise. I’m attending a book club for people with AS/HFA, a book club I’ve been attending since early summer. This book club has grown from a core of five aspies + one NT moderator to eleven aspies + four NT moderators. At this meeting, we’re voting on what our next book will be. We’ve just finished Twilight, a teenage vampire romance novel that half of us like and the other half want to burn (and I’m the middle one — the one who just wants to gag). After a couple rounds of voting, we’ve narrowed things down to two possibilities: Catch-22 and Curious.

Before the final vote, three aspies voice their vehement objections to Curious. They maintain that it’s the most simplistic, vilest, dumbest, evilest book they’ve ever read. We vote, and Curious wins — because two aspies have abstained from voting, and all four NTs cast their votes for Curious.

One aspie totally flips out in authentic autistic fashion, screaming and jumping and flailing. Another covers her ears. Two others start yelling. Two leave the table. One looks bewildered. My hard drive shuts down, then crashes, and I mentally leave planet earth, effectively mute and literally senseless.

I don’t remember much else, except that once my brain foggily deciphers the words “next time,” I grab my book and run, and a few alarmed people chase after me asking what’s wrong, and all I can hear and see in my brain is the f-word, which I try very hard not to say, so I run outside without my jacket, and the cold jars me, and one of the moderators tries to calm me down, and I mince my words, mince my breaths, mince my papercuts and bruises that I don’t remember acquiring, mince, mince, mince.

It is now today, and I have again cracked open Curious, again by force, reopening one of the papercuts I unknowingly formed with Twilight while tranced the other evening. I sit here, thinking about audience and its intersections with empathy, that favored NT buzzword. And I read the bylines:

“This original and affecting novel is a triumph of empathy.” — The New Yorker

“Mark Haddon’s portrayal of an emotionally dissociated mind is a superb achievement. He is a wise and bleakly funny writer with rare gifts of empathy.” — Ian McEwan, author of Atonement

“Exceptional by any standards. Haddon sticks rigidly to the limits imposed by autism without sacrificing literary viability. When we look at the world through Christopher’s eyes we see it more clearly and understand ourselves better. What more could you want of a book?” — The Sunday Telegraph

“Wonderfully surreal…. Heartbreaking and inspiring…. It is hard to think of anyone who would not be moved and delighted by this book.” — Financial Times (London)

Mince, mince, mince.

Of course, I think that this theory has done quite some damage. Autistics have been represented as characteristically unempathetic individuals. And this “unempathetic” characterization has often been conflated with emotionlessness, conceitedness, apathy, and plain old malevolent and murderous evil. While I don’t deny that I’m hardly able to place myself in the shoes of others, I do posit that no one can really, truly place themselves in someone else’s shoes, unless we’re talking about literal shoes with similar foot sizes. In any event, I think there’s a limit and a danger to this thing we call empathy, because empathy isn’t wholly concrete and logical. Empathy, by definition, involves assumption and guesswork.

Empathy (or imagined understanding) can only be remotely successful when engaged between people with similar backgrounds, people who occupy similar social stations. Thus, in the same manner that auties have difficulty empathizing with NTs, so too do NTs have difficulty empathizing with auties. (James Wilson, in Weather Reports from the Autism Front, makes this very point about empathy. He can’t pretend to understand his autistic son’s experiences, his ways of knowing and being. Neurotypicals are just as empathetically impaired as autistics.)

[Jenny McCarthy: "expert" on autism, empathy, and strapless bras]

I like Dennis Lynch’s complication of empathy in “Rhetorics of Proximity: Empathy in Temple Grandin and Cornel West.” In his article, Lynch suggests that true empathy is never possible because such an act results in “bodily displacement,” in colonization or assimilation. So, in order for an NT to step into an autistic’s shoes, the autistic has to physically remove her feet from her shoes. As a result, when an NT claims to empathize with autistic experience, the NT is really imagining what it would be like for an NT to be an autistic — not what it is like for an autistic to be an autistic. The same could be said about an autistic person attempting to empathize with an NT: bodily displacement results.

Of course, because neurotypicality is the dominant neuro-discourse, NT ways of empathizing are considered more acceptable than autistic ways of empathizing. Warning of empathy’s co-optive dangers, Lynch writes,

Empathy in this way may seem like a harmless practice as one imagines how another may be feeling about an event, circumstance, or issue, but, as these critics argue, whatever’s empathy’s expressed aims may be, asking people to empathize usually locates the obstacles to empathy—to listening and to being heard—solely in the minds and habits of individual participants, and so obscures or ignores the political and economic and bodily dimensions of social struggles. (6)

This isn’t to say that empathy is inherently bad or wrong. However, empathy has its limits and dangers — severe limits and dangers. In assuming we can experience the fullness of another person’s “lifeworld,” we erase, or make transparent, very real differences (Lynch 9).