Naming Adult Autism: Culture, Science, Identity

272 Pages·2017·1.95 MB·English

by  James McGrath

Naming Adult Autism

Naming Adult Autism
Culture, Science, Identity
James McGrath
London• NewYork
Published by Rowman & Littlefield International Ltd
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Copyright © 2017 by James McGrath
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any
electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems,
without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote
passages in a review.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: HB 978-1-78348-040-1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Is Available
978-1-78348-040-1 (cloth)
978-1-78348-041-8 (paper)
978-1-78348-042-5 (electronic)
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American
National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library
Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
Printed in the United States of America
This book is dedicated with love and thanks to the National Health Service of
the UK. The workers of the NHS help us into and out of the world; they are
also there for us along the way, and ask for nothing in return.

Contents
Acknowledgements xi
Introduction: Culture and diagnosis 1
An introduction to five chapters 5
An introduction to autism, interpellation and identity 11
Autism diagnostic criteria: Social communication
and interaction 14
Autism diagnostic criteria: Restricted and
repetitive patterns 16
1 ‘Outsider Science’ and literary exclusion: A reply to
denials of autistic imagination 21
Childhood autism and the psychiatric imagination 23
Autism and the machine 26
Computer coding and/as literature: The naming of
autism in Douglas Coupland’s Microserfs 30
Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake: Autism
and literary exclusion 34
Limitations and inaccuracies in Simon Baron-Cohen’s
‘Minds Wired for Science’ narrative 37
Bias in the Adult Autism-Spectrum Quotient test (2001):
History and legacy 40
Re-membering autistic imagination: Asperger,
Wing and ‘Harro L.’ 46
Silberman’s Neurotribes: Science, science
fiction and autism 53
Word persons of the autistic world unite: Critical
responses to Atwood’s Oryx and Crake 56
vii
viii Contents
Conclusion: The sySTEMizing focus and its implications
for autistic diversity 58
2 Metaphors and mirrors: The otherness of adult autism 69
Picking up the mirror: Enfreaking normalcy 71
The infantilizing of adult autism in diagnostic
observations 73
Autism and disorder: Foucault, confinement
and cultural fear 75
The screen as mirror: Ricky Gervais’s The Office (UK)
and the neurotypical gaze 78
Post-Curious: Adult autism as cultural spectacle in
Big Bang Theory and The Accountant 81
Conjecturing otherness: Autism, metaphor
and metonymy 83
Lost in the mirror metaphor: Challenging the myth
of autistic narcissism 87
The broken metaphor: ‘Mirror neuron’ theory
and the normative stare 90
Otherizing autism parents: Refrigerator psychiatrists
and their 21st-century spectres 92
The Who’s Tommy (1969) and the cultural onset of
metaphorical autism 97
Autism and the person: Les Murray’s ‘It Allows a
Portrait in Line scan at Fifteen’ 104
Normativity through the looking-glass: Joanne Limburg’s
The Autistic Alice (2017) 113
Otherness, autism and acceptance 118
3 Against the ‘new classic’ adult autism: Narratives
of gender, intersectionality and progression 127
Patriarchy and autism: The Cambridge Autism
Research Centre and the ‘extreme male brain’ 128
The extreme male gaze: Scientific ‘evidence’ on autism
and testosterone 139
Fictions of the new classic autism 141
Bron/Broen: Neurodiversity, The Bridge and autistic
‘adherence to rules’ 147
Kay Mellor’s The Syndicate (2015): Class, criminality,
race and adult autism 151
Clare Morrall’s The Language of Others: Autism,
womanhood and intersectionality 156
Contents ix
Family and phenotype: Reading autism in Meg Wolitzer’s
The Interestings (2013) 165
Conclusion: Cultural disability 174
4 ‘Title’ 183
5 Performing the names of autism 185
Naming the self autistic 186
Anger, faith and the realization of Asperger syndrome:
Les Murray’s ‘The Tune on Your Mind’ (2006) 187
The politics of a name: Aspies, DSM-5 and the psychiatric
retraction of Asperger syndrome 189
Autism, performativity and performance 193
Autistic criticism 1: Revisiting E. M. Forster’s
Howards End (1910) 201
Autistic criticism 2: Neurodiverse meeting points in
‘Mad World’ 208
Bibliography 217
Index 237
About the Author 259