Constructing Autism--Introduction

Nadesan, Majia Holmer. Constructing Autism: Unravelling the "Truth" and Understanding the Social. New York: Routledge, 2005.

Chapter 1: Introduction

"The medical and scientific literatures represent autism as a biological facticity that must be explained using the positivist methods and assumptions of the natural sciences" (Nadesan 2). I think this point is important because I'm thinking that part of my discussion in my dissertation will focus on representations or identifying autism as a biological condition and a psychopathic condition.

I know Dr. T has said often that she believes that depression and mental illnesses are biological in origin. And, while I'm not looking to refute that statement, the difference between autism as biological and psychological in origin is relevant for discussions of treatment and origin--namely, do parents choose to "treat" autism with medication, dietary changes, DAN protocols? Is the "autistic condition" one that occurs to an otherwise "normal" brain in response to biological factors (like mercury, for instance)? Or, do parents choose to view autism as a neurological development (or lack thereof) and choose to "treat" autism with ABA therapy, neurological acceptance, and the like? In other words, autistic children were born with brains that functioned differently, not because of any acute biological factor, but because their brains just developed differently. The distinction then between autism as biological, environmental, and developmental is crucial in contemporary rhetorics...

In Let Me Hear Your Voice: A Family's Triumph over Autism, "autism is a biologically based psychiatric condition to be therapied, remedied, assaulted in an effort to 'save' afflicted children locked inside an autistic cage" (Nadesan 2).

Nadesan: "it became increasingly clear to me that autism, or more specifically, the idea of autism is fundamentally socially constructed" (2).

"autism has a performative component" (Nadesan 2). I find this statement particular interesting, especially thinking about Aristotle's 5th canon of rhetoric: Delivery. How much of low/high-functioning distinctions is based on the performative component of autism? Especially considering criticisms against autism bloggers like this one (link from bookmark on other computer) who are criticized for blogging about autism and appearing on CNN and how their children, based on the televised report on autism, don't appear to be all that autistic, or the criticisms against Amanda Baggs, most notably by John Best Jr., because of her performances on autism that she's able to do. Especially interesting for this discussion: Baggs publicizes her autistic behaviors in vignettes (for lack of a better word) on Youtube. (link up here)

Something to consider: performative aspects of autism on Youtube by autistic individuals. Also, criticisms of ABA therapy because of emphasis on spoken delivery. Considered by notable Anti-ABA blogger, Autism Diva, (find her name) as abuse...

"Although there is a biological aspect to this condition named autism, the social factors involved in its identification, representation, interpretation, remediation, and performance are the most important factors in the determination of what it means to be autistic, for individuals, for families and for society" (Nadesan 2).

"'autism' as an epidemic has also captured the public imagination as a disorder that is regarded simultaneously as both threatening and fascinating. Therefore, exploration of the social conditions involved in the production, interpretation, and remediation of autism is important not only for people intimately involved with autism, but also for those interested in how social institutions such as medicine, psychology, and psychiatry, and even the popular media, constitute and shape our ideas about normality and difference in the context of economic and political environments" (Nadesan 3).

"Autism, I will argue, is a disorder of the early twentieth century while the high-functioning variants of autism such as Semantic Pragmatic Disorder (SPD), Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD), and Asperger's syndrome (AS) are fundamentally disorders of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries" (Nadesan 3).

Autism as a disorder could not have occurred prior to the twentieth century because "[i]t was not until standards of normality had been formalized and narrowed and standards of pediatric screening extended to a child's earliest years that children with PDD, SPD, AS (or Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)) could be widely identified, labeled, and therapied" (Nadesan 3).

"The history of 'high-functioning' forms of autism must be further understood in the context of new standards for parenting that emerged mid-twentieth century and new economic and social conditions surrounding the purported 'information revolution' that began in the 1960's" (Nadesan 3).

"alternative explanations for interpreting the rise of autism diagnoses must be explored. In particular, environmental discourses play an important, although somewhat marginal role, in explaining and preventing disease at the end of the twentieth-century. These environmental discourses, particularly when coupled with biomedical frameworks, play a role in the political debates surrounding the causes of autism" (Nadesan 4).

"autism reflect[s] and shape[s] societal norms and expectations and opportunities for personhood" (Nadesan 5).

"the emergence, identification, and treatment of disease are always infused with cultural practices, values, and frameworks of interpretation" (Nadesan 5).

"autism can be understood historically as a 'niche' disorder whose interpretation, representation in research practices and in the popular imagination, and remediation reflect cultural preoccupations and concerns" (Nadesan 5).

"the matrix of institutions and practices that engendered the identification and exploration of autism [...] was dependent upon the emergence of a new, early-twentieth-century psychiatric model of the medical subject that centered childhood psychopathology, personality, and social relationships/interpersonal dynamics" (Nadesan 5).