Authoring Autism: On Rhetoric and Neurological Queerness
(Duke University Press, December 2017)

Book description

Cover of Authoring Autism, featuring artwork by Dan Miller (a gorgeous print of black, gray, and blue thatched lines). Winner of the 2017 Modern Language Association First Book Prize

Winner of the 2019 CCCC Lavender Rhetorics Award for Excellence in Queer Scholarship Book Award

Winner of the 2019 Rhetoric Society of America Book Award

In Authoring Autism Melanie 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 question the ableist privileging of intentionality and diplomacy in rhetorical traditions. Using storying as their method, they present an alternate 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.