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

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Using storying as her method, she presents an alternative view of autistic rhetoricity by foregrounding the cunning rhetorical abilities of autistics and by framing autism as a narrative condition wherein autistics are the best-equipped people to define their experience. Through six sections entitled: involution, intention, intervention, invitation, invention, and indexicality, Authoring Autism directs the attention of its readers to several paradoxes that the medical and psychological rhetoric of autism inhabits. The substance which is, a polemic on those that abuse those with autism by treating them as near monsters.

Melanie Yergeau’s double perspective as a rhetorician and autistic activist that makes Authoring Autism valuable to a larger audience. Still a very worthwhile read –– for me the book drove home the way that social and rhetorical norms "unperson" autistics, given that autistic people do not have access to or use intentionality and rhetoric in the same way, do not participate in persuasion or invention (which assumes two equal parties, often not the case), the way that like queerness, autism has been, often violently, suppressed by the medical and scientific communities in purported attempts at cures and that autistic people, like queer folks, are denied expertise on their own lived experience, because of that lived experience, the way that autism, like queerness, defies boundaries and crafts meaning and pleasure out of experiences and landscapes that are not inherently meaningful to those who share them. This is not just a landmark book; it's a book that opens up a whole terrain of discourse informed by the insights of queer theory and the disability rights movement.In Authoring Autism Melanie Yergeau defines neurodivergence as an identity—neuroqueerness—rather than an impairment. She also critiques early intensive behavioral interventions—which have much in common with gay conversion therapy—and questions the ableist privileging of intentionality and diplomacy in rhetorical traditions. They also critique early intensive behavioral interventions—which have much in common with gay conversion therapy—and questions the ableist privileging of intentionality and diplomacy in rhetorical traditions.

Sketching new terrains of thought, Authoring Autism gestures toward vibrant words, images, and textures that sit with us, and we feel their weight. With an unexpected, delightful turn to theorization of asexual and demisexual experiences as evidence of the autistic "demi-rhetorician"'s power, Yergeau concludes with an opening, especially for queer and trans studies.Through her many invitational gestures Yergeau provocatively intervenes in the readings of the rhetoric of normalcy while also evoking new possibilities for distinctly different autistic rhetorics. There is a fascinating book to be written on the overlap between queerness and autism, both in terms of how the two concepts have been framed throughout history, and how people labeled as "queer" and/or "autistic" have been (and continue to be) mistreated by society. Becoming nonautistic is likewise becoming nonqueer-for anything that registers as socially deviant may fall under autism's purview.