Book explores representation of autism in fiction and film

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Woodpeace
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10 Sep 2008, 7:05 am

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:

Quote:
Well aware that it is difference that is central to her argument, Baggs makes herself the subject of her wider political statement. It is her own pleasures, preferences and modes of communication that become the source of her articulation of what autistic subjectivity might be. [...] The temptation to see Baggs isolated and 'locked away' here, somehow lost in her sensory expereiences, is one that the video implicitly understands and then undercuts with the 'explanation' of her actions in the second section. Here, the assertion of the normativity of Baggs' world is, at heart, a statement about rights, a demand that her life is seen and comprehended on her own terms. For all of the brevity of the video, it is remarkably effective in its presentation of a viable and legitimate adult autistic self, and in its construction of a powerful argument about the need for such a self to be understood.

After describing the Getting the Truth Out website, in which Amanda is the central figure, Murray states:
Quote:
As a disability rights advocate, Baggs has been caught up in the often furious debates that exist, particularly in the US, over the nature of autism and especially the vaccine fears and the call for a 'cure' for the condition [...] In describing her 'world', Baggs knowingly extends her commentary to a more generalized idea of a life with autism. There are those who see such a move as, in itself, a misrepresentation of many lives lived with autism, and even those who doubt Baggs' representation of her own condition. The numerous autism blogs are full of claim and counterclaim as to the ethics and politics of such representation.

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.
Quote:
It is impossible to tell if the girls in Bown's photograph 'overcome' anything. They are not in the business of such an act. Crucially the photograph implicitly asks us, its viewers, what exactly there might be to overcome in the first place and why we might make such an assumption.

The photograph was also chosen because of its age.
Quote:
[Autism] had no discernible presence in the cultural narratives of the 1960s, precisely because of the wider ignorance of autism within the society of the time. Bown's photograph is thus an anomaly, an intervention into 1960s's conventions of looking at children. It is not overlaid by the complex public apprehension of autism that we find in our presentation. [...] Above all, and this is central to the text that follows, the girls in Bown's photograph are present , and it is the fact of their presence that needs to be reckoned with, understood and listened to.

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:
Quote:
someone supposedly lacking in so many things has taught me more about being human than any person on the planet.

I expect that someday the book will be a set text for appropriate university and college courses.



UnusualSuspect
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10 Sep 2008, 8:18 am

Judging from the excerpts, it seems as if it might become important as a much-needed text book, but the language is so dry and academic that I doubt it will reach ordinary readers in great numbers.



Belfast
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13 Sep 2008, 4:31 am

UnusualSuspect wrote:
Judging from the excerpts, it seems as if it might become important as a much-needed text book, but the language is so dry and academic that I doubt it will reach ordinary readers in great numbers.

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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