Autism and Civilization

Instructor: Ben Woodard Date & Time: March 29, April 5, 12, 19 09:00-11:30 ET

DESCRIPTION: Taking the cue from Foucault, this Seminar will look at autism as a flash point within discourse about biology, politics, and culture. Since its description in the early 1900s as a form of childhood schizophrenia, autism has rapidly transformed and shifted from a developmental “catastrophe,” to the result of emotionless parents, to environmentally caused, to part of a larger neurodiversity movement. The Seminar will look at how autism has activated and reactivated mad activism, the neoliberalism of neurodiversity, and the questions of biopolitics and the function of norms in contemporary life.

Session 1: From the Ship of Fools to the Hospital Ship / Much panic around autism relies on pathologization and the weaponization of statistics against the condition. The first session will examine how autism was constructed as a kind of general loss of reason and autonomy from within classifications of schizophrenia and psychosis.
Readings: Chapters from Neurotribes; excerpt from The Hospital Ship; Preface to Foucault’s Madness and Civilization

Session 2: T.O.M., Tommy, and Sally-Anne / Theory of Mind and Theory of the Self / A central aspect of the diagnosis and medical articulation of autism in the late 1980s and 1990s was the assertion that autistic individuals lacked any notion of sense of self and therefore were incapable of empathy. Here philosophy of mind and psychology mask for cultural norms, particularly prevalent in the way theory of mind (TOM) is treated as psychological fact. We will also explore alternative understandings of theory of mind, such as narrative theory and monotropism.
Readings: Essays from Simon Baron-Cohen and Devon Price; excerpts from Empire of Normality (Chapman)

Session 3: Neanderthals, Animals, and Aliens / Another aspect of the study of autism revolves around splitting autistic humans off from neurotypical humanity. This has been done through associations with Neanderthal DNA on the one hand and by claiming that neurodivergent people are more akin to animals or aliens from another planet. These themes have also at times fed into notions of “Aspie supremacy” or constructions of autistic identity as something superior to allistic or neurotypical individuals.
Readings: The Arachnean (Ferdinand Deligny); “Enrichment of a Subset of Neanderthal Polymorphisms in Autistic Probands and Siblings” (Pauly et al.)

Session 4: Vaccines and Memes, or Autism as Culture Machine / This final session will look at the most recent aspects of autistic identity in the cultural and political present. Increased advocacy by way of neurodivergence has been met with rejuvenated forms of eugenics as well as the discussion of autistic children at the expense of autistic adults. This infantilization of autism has been appropriated by groups as disparate as right-wing mothers of autistic children to reality TV producers. Lastly, we will address the specter of vaccines which refuses to die.
Readings: “Vaccines and Autism: A Measured Response” (hbomberguy); “Ileal-Lymphoid-Nodular Hyperplasia, Non-Specific Colitis, and Pervasive Developmental Disorder in Children” (Andrew Wakefield)

IMAGE: Francisco Goya, Witches’ Flight, ca. 1798.

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