I figure that a good post-hiatus post might involve what I’ve been up to lately that is non-dissertation — that is, teaching. This past quarter, I taught an undergraduate section of Intro to Disability Studies, the second time I’ve taught this course. And in the fall I’m teaching a special topics in literature course called Authoring Autism. I kind of figure that folks who read my blog will have a lot to say about the autism class in particular.

Above is an image of my course flyer — I’ve been posting these across campus. I decided on going the “famous people who might have been autistic” route not because I like to retrodiagnose dead people (I loathe doing that, actually), but because 1) retrodiagnosis is one among many topics I’d like my students to critically engage this fall, and 2) I was hoping to attract students, especially from the humanities, to my class. Class enrollment is up to 18 people, which is pretty good for a special topics course. < /explanation>

I’ve drafted a syllabus for the course, which you can find here in PDF format. I’d like to emphasize that it’s a rough draft, and I’m already making changes in the assignments, schedule, and readings (i.e., I’m adding in materials from the neurodiversity special issue of DSQ, giving students more memoirs to choose from, figuring out potential guest speakers, etc.). I’ve also included my course description behind the cut — at root, this is a course that considers how autism and autistic people are represented across media.

I am, however, open to suggestions. Ohio State terms run 10 weeks in length, so we’re limited with our time. But I’d very much like to find out what others in the blogosphere would like to see in a class like this.

Course description: Public discourse on autism has reached critical mass. It’s hard to open a newspaper, change a TV channel, or browse a Facebook profile without catching something about autism—the epidemic, the puzzles, the children, the charities, the discrimination. The CDC currently touts a 1 in 110 autism incidence rate; former Playboy bunnies claim that our government is poisoning children with heavy metals and dairy products; popular TV shows feature unemotional autistic characters with savant-like super powers; and college programs are molding the most autism-centric cohort of disability service professionals our country has seen to date. If we’re to believe anything we encounter in the media or popular literature, we can certainly believe that autism is everywhere and has the potential to touch anyone at any time.

With this supposed increase in autism has come an increase in texts about autism (across media, across genre), much of it volatile and emotionally charged. Our main objective in this class, then, is to consider the rhetorical import of these texts, to develop an understanding of autism as a complex and crucial part of the human experience, to examine the ways in which able-bodiedness (or neurotypicality) has become an invisible default. We’ll work together in exploring how the authors of these various texts aim to persuade an audience that their view is the most emotionally, ethically, or logically sound view. To that end, we’ll also investigate the many important issues—legal, social, cultural, medical, political—currently at stake in the autism world. Throughout the term, we’ll continually engage popular, literary, and scholarly representations of autism in print, film, and the blogosphere in light of the following questions: What does it mean to be an autistic person? What does it mean to be an autism parent, professional, or advocate? What does it mean to author autism?

Our local ASAN chapter protested Autism Speaks earlier this week. I created the following YouTube video, which documents the story.

]]> http://aspierhetor.com/2010/04/23/what-ive-been-up-to-read-dissertating-protesting/feed/ 6 http://aspierhetor.com/2009/04/30/where-ive-been/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=where-ive-been http://aspierhetor.com/2009/04/30/where-ive-been/#comments Thu, 30 Apr 2009 19:55:12 +0000 Melanie http://aspierhetor.com/?p=399 It’s been a month. A hectic month, to say the least. This evening, at 5:45pm, we’re holding our first official meeting for the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network at Ohio State. Benzion Chinn and I are co-chairing the group. I’m quite excited, though I’m also quite nervous. We have no idea what the turnout will be like. I’m hoping for a moderate number of dedicated people. Too few people would be sad, and too many people would be overwhelming. Alas, we shall see.

[For more details about the meeting, you can read the ASAN-Central Ohio blog.]

I’ve also [finally] finished writing my program of study, a massive document that describes my field and focus areas and contains my reading lists for exams. I just found out that it passed, and I’ll post the document here in the next few days as it’s quite relevant to this blog.

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.