In Authoring Autism M. Remi Yergeau defines neurodivergence as an identity—neuroqueerness—rather than an impairment. Using a queer theory framework, Yergeau notes the stereotypes that deny autistic people their humanity and the chance to define themselves while also challenging cognitive studies scholarship and its reification of the neurological passivity of autistics. 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. Using storying as their method, they present 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. Contending that autism represents a queer way of being that simultaneously embraces and rejects the rhetorical, Yergeau shows how autistic people queer the lines of rhetoric, humanity, and agency. In so doing, they demonstrate how an autistic rhetoric requires the reconceptualization of rhetoric’s very essence.
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Challenging the academic and cultural stereotypes that do not acknowledge the rhetorical capabilities of autistic people, M. Remi Yergeau shows how autistics both embrace and reject the rhetorical, thereby queering the lines of rhetoric, humanity, agency, and the very essence of rhetoric itself.
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Acknowledgments  vii Introduction. Involution  1 1. Intention  35 2. Intervention  89 3. Invitation  135 4. Invention  175 Epilogue. Indexicality  207 Notes  215 Bibliography  261 Index  289
"Authoring Autism provides many thought-provoking insights for disability scholars. . . . Melanie Yergeau’s double perspective as a rhetorician and autistic activist that makes Authoring Autism valuable to a larger audience."
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"With philosophical and rhetorical acuity and a large dose of humor, M. Remi Yergeau interweaves autism research into other areas of thought, providing new ways of thinking about rhetoric, queerness, and neurology. This is without doubt the most thoroughgoing, rigorous, and creative work on authoring autism I have read. As a reader I have been changed, my attention drawn to the necessity to attend not only to the style, and to writing, but to the terms according to which some of us are given access to these voices we too often take for granted."
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Produktdetaljer

ISBN
9780822370116
Publisert
2018-01-05
Utgiver
Vendor
Duke University Press
Vekt
567 gr
Høyde
229 mm
Bredde
152 mm
Aldersnivå
UP, 05
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Innbundet

Forfatter

Biographical note

M. Remi Yergeau is Assistant Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Michigan.