Book explores representation of autism in fiction and film
Yesterday I received my copy of Representing Autism: Culture, Narrative, Fascination by Stuart Murray, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press (2008), which I had ordered from the publishers. There is a synopsis of the book here: http://www.liverpool-unipress.co.uk/htm ... oduct=3719 . It is distributed in North America and Mexico by the University of Chicago Press: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/presssite ... key=255978 . The author is Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Leeds.
It explores in detail the ways in which autism has been represented in different texts such as literary fiction, the commercial cinema, television, photography, and on the Web from the 19th century to the present day. It discusses in considerable detail books written by autistics such as Temple Grandin, Tito Rajarashi Mukhopadhyay (author of Beyond the Silence: My Life, the World and Autism), and Donna Williams.
There are several pages about Amanda Baggs. It discusses intelligently and perceptively her video In My Language:
After describing the Getting the Truth Out website, in which Amanda is the central figure, Murray states:
Baggs' presence here, then, is one that can be read as deeply provocative, even to those 'within' the various autism debates; yet in one sense her writings and films are a continuation of the tradition by which individuals with autism represent themselves. [...] Certainly there is a strong tendency in most published life writing by autistic individuals to address a non-autistic audience and to seek to 'explain' the condition [...] In My Language also fulfils such a purpose, given the direct nature of its address to a majority audience and movement from 'my' to 'your' in its narrative.
The photograph on the cover of Representing Autism, which is shown on the synposis of the book on the websites to which I linked, is of two autistic girls. Its title is autistic children and was taken by Jane Bown, a leading British press photographer, at The Lindens, a special education school in Surrey, England, in March 1966. In the book's preface, Murray explains why he chose that photograph. It asks its viewers to think through any supposition "that the girls have 'retreated' into themselves." It challenges the dominant ideology that disability is something to be overcome.
The photograph was also chosen because of its age.
This book is well worth reading. It is an original and important autistic-friendly addition to the literature about autism and a significant work of cultural criticism. There is a discussion of it here: http://asdgestalt.com/viewtopic.php?f=3 ... =a&start=0 , to which Stuart Murray has contributed.
Murray has dedicated the book to Lucas, his autistic son: "never alone in any world, because he is always in mine", about whom he writes in the Acknowledgements:
I expect that someday the book will be a set text for appropriate university and college courses.
I ordered the book & it arrived a week or so ago.
Have read most of it, and admit it's rather dry & not as "accessible" or user-friendly as I'd hoped/anticipated. I'm intellectual enough to decipher words, but things get rather dense & hard-to-follow in this book.
Realize that's the nature of certain genre of philosophical/cultural/social criticism, but still wish it were a bit less abstruse. However, am pleased that such a book has come out, to analyze an overview of "what does this dx mean" to different parties.
Found 2 apparent (I could be mistaken, perhaps they're examples of British linguistic convention) typos thus far...guess that's me being OCD or AS, to notice these.
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*"I don't know what it is, but I know what it isn't."*
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