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Autistic Disturbances: Theorizing Autism Poetics from the DSM to Robinson Crusoe
While research on autism has sometimes focused on special talents or abilities, autism is typically characterized as impoverished or defective when it comes to language. Autistic Disturbances reveals the ways interpreters have failed to register the real creative valence of autistic language and offers a theoretical framework for understanding the distinctive aesthetics of autistic rhetoric and semiotics. Reinterpreting characteristic autistic verbal practices such as repetition in the context of a more widely respected literary canon, Julia Miele Rodas argues that autistic language is actually an essential part of mainstream literary aesthetics, visible in poetry by Walt Whitman and Gertrude Stein, in novels by Charlotte Brontë and Daniel Defoe, in life writing by Andy Warhol, and even in writing by figures from popular culture.
Autistic Disturbances pursues these resonances and explores the tensions of language and culture that lead to the classification of some verbal expression as disordered while other, similar expression enjoys prized status as literature. It identifies the most characteristic patterns of autistic expression-repetition, monologue, ejaculation, verbal ordering or list-making, and neologism-and adopts new language to describe and reimagine these categories in aesthetically productive terms. In so doing, the book seeks to redress the place of verbal autistic language, to argue for the value and complexity of autistic ways of speaking, and to invite recognition of an obscured tradition of literary autism at the very center of Anglo-American text culture.
Autistic Disturbances pursues these resonances and explores the tensions of language and culture that lead to the classification of some verbal expression as disordered while other, similar expression enjoys prized status as literature. It identifies the most characteristic patterns of autistic expression-repetition, monologue, ejaculation, verbal ordering or list-making, and neologism-and adopts new language to describe and reimagine these categories in aesthetically productive terms. In so doing, the book seeks to redress the place of verbal autistic language, to argue for the value and complexity of autistic ways of speaking, and to invite recognition of an obscured tradition of literary autism at the very center of Anglo-American text culture.
248 pages, Hardcover
Published August 3, 2018
16 people are currently reading
214 people want to read
About the author
Julia Miele Rodas
2 books20 followersJulia Miele Rodas is Professor of English at Bronx Community College of the City University of New York. She earned her M.Phil. and Ph.D. in English from the CUNY Graduate Center and holds a B.A. in Liberal Arts from Sarah Lawrence College.
A disability studies scholar and Victorianist, Julia is the author of Autistic Disturbances (University of Michigan Press, 2018), an academic book that theorizes the role of autistic rhetoric and aesthetic in literature. She is also co-editor of a collection on disability in Jane Eyre, The Madwoman and the Blindman (The Ohio State University Press, 2012) and co-editor of the Literary Disability Studies book series for Palgrave Macmillan. Her writing has appeared in numerous books and journals, including Victorian Literature & Culture, Dickens Studies Annual, the Victorian Review, the Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies, Disability Studies Quarterly, and other venues.
Julia teaches writing, literature, and disability studies at Bronx Community College as well as guest courses at Lehman College, CUNY’s School for Professional Studies, and the CUNY Graduate Center. She is also co-Chair of the Columbia University Seminar in Disability, Culture & Society and a founder of the CUNY Disability Scholars.
In her fantasy life, Julia dreams of writing a campus novel that would amuse others the way the novels of David Lodge, Allison Lurie, and Richard Russo have delighted her.
A disability studies scholar and Victorianist, Julia is the author of Autistic Disturbances (University of Michigan Press, 2018), an academic book that theorizes the role of autistic rhetoric and aesthetic in literature. She is also co-editor of a collection on disability in Jane Eyre, The Madwoman and the Blindman (The Ohio State University Press, 2012) and co-editor of the Literary Disability Studies book series for Palgrave Macmillan. Her writing has appeared in numerous books and journals, including Victorian Literature & Culture, Dickens Studies Annual, the Victorian Review, the Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies, Disability Studies Quarterly, and other venues.
Julia teaches writing, literature, and disability studies at Bronx Community College as well as guest courses at Lehman College, CUNY’s School for Professional Studies, and the CUNY Graduate Center. She is also co-Chair of the Columbia University Seminar in Disability, Culture & Society and a founder of the CUNY Disability Scholars.
In her fantasy life, Julia dreams of writing a campus novel that would amuse others the way the novels of David Lodge, Allison Lurie, and Richard Russo have delighted her.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
October 1, 2022
This is one of my favorite books about autism, because I do really love books that make me think about autism through expressions of creativity. The quotes pulled out here won't really give you a full idea of the book, but I've pulled these out because of their importance in my own scholarship and research.
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"...neuroqueer gestures toward a cultural history shared by neurodivergent and queer peoples and speaks to overlaps of identity and experience of (resistance to) forced compliance. ... Just as queer reclaims epithet, neuroqueer redefines and reclaims identity from clinical and popular arenas that demean, dismiss, malign, and infantilize. Neuroqueer is decidedly a cultural site, not a diagnosis." (p. xvii)
"...active efforts at politically conscious language are directed toward a moving target. As long as the people named continue to struggle for power and agency within the dominant culture, terminology will necessarily continue to shift as part of this process." (p. xvii)
"Autistic language, like all language, is infinitely complex and pliable, infinitely customizable." (p. 5)
"Autism not only speaks but speaks in a voice both familiar and highly valued." (p. 28)
"Autism, I suggest, may be understood as an aesthetic, a way of seeing and interpreting, a vantage, a mode, a set of expressive practices." (p.29)
"Autism might be 'central to the ways in which we conceive of our fundamental sense of self' and intimately connected 'to the core experience of humanity'" (p. 30, quoting Stuart Murray)
"In relation to autistic expression, the receptive process of the audience is too often prioritized." (p 32)
"... autism might not only be saying something worth hearing, but also that autistic verbal abundances might have authentic aesthetic and interpersonal value." (p. 50)
Topics
Autism Speaks (p. 36-37) & the puzzle piece (p. 39)
Echolalia (p. 43)
Infodumping (p. 48, 50, 58-59)
Author's descriptions of qualities of autistic language:
ricochet, apostrophe (p. 6)
ejaculation (p. 7)
discretion - system expression (p. 7, 13)
invention (p. 8)
______
"...neuroqueer gestures toward a cultural history shared by neurodivergent and queer peoples and speaks to overlaps of identity and experience of (resistance to) forced compliance. ... Just as queer reclaims epithet, neuroqueer redefines and reclaims identity from clinical and popular arenas that demean, dismiss, malign, and infantilize. Neuroqueer is decidedly a cultural site, not a diagnosis." (p. xvii)
"...active efforts at politically conscious language are directed toward a moving target. As long as the people named continue to struggle for power and agency within the dominant culture, terminology will necessarily continue to shift as part of this process." (p. xvii)
"Autistic language, like all language, is infinitely complex and pliable, infinitely customizable." (p. 5)
"Autism not only speaks but speaks in a voice both familiar and highly valued." (p. 28)
"Autism, I suggest, may be understood as an aesthetic, a way of seeing and interpreting, a vantage, a mode, a set of expressive practices." (p.29)
"Autism might be 'central to the ways in which we conceive of our fundamental sense of self' and intimately connected 'to the core experience of humanity'" (p. 30, quoting Stuart Murray)
"In relation to autistic expression, the receptive process of the audience is too often prioritized." (p 32)
"... autism might not only be saying something worth hearing, but also that autistic verbal abundances might have authentic aesthetic and interpersonal value." (p. 50)
Topics
Autism Speaks (p. 36-37) & the puzzle piece (p. 39)
Echolalia (p. 43)
Infodumping (p. 48, 50, 58-59)
Author's descriptions of qualities of autistic language:
ricochet, apostrophe (p. 6)
ejaculation (p. 7)
discretion - system expression (p. 7, 13)
invention (p. 8)
December 31, 2022
Julia Miele Rodas' work is very much about discourse (the clinical, dominant strains, and the resistantly neuroqueer) intersecting with an analytic in poetics.
Rodas goes beyond mere diagnostic literary spotting and offers a nuanced analysis of language and autistic poetics (after outlining and recovering these from pathologising early observers of autistic people).
This actually became a page turner for me. The Defoe Robinson Crusoe chapter, the last one, I think just needed more colonial critique as context setting.
Rodas goes beyond mere diagnostic literary spotting and offers a nuanced analysis of language and autistic poetics (after outlining and recovering these from pathologising early observers of autistic people).
This actually became a page turner for me. The Defoe Robinson Crusoe chapter, the last one, I think just needed more colonial critique as context setting.
May 6, 2021
I went back and forth on how to rate this book, but I think my final rating is 3.5 stars.
Positives: This book didn't attempt to essentialize autistic modes of language production and communication, but to understand multiple, simultaneous forms of autistic speech and silence. It's unabashedly and usefully autism-positive, it resists top-down diagnostic models of autism in favor of flexible understandings of thought and relationship processing, and many of its critical approaches and comments are really interesting (particularly in the introduction and the chapter on Frankenstein).
Neutralities: I expected more of a focus on "poetics," given the subtitle, but it might've been more appropriate to characterize this book as about "autism rhetorics" or "autism prosaics." There's simply much more of a focus on narrative fiction, rhetorical strategy, and clinical diagnostic language than what I would expect of "poetics."
Negatives: I worry that in so significantly broadening what counts as a potentially autistic form of language use, this book runs the risk of disconnecting theories and critical lens of autism rhetoric from the real, lived experiences of autistic individuals. I kept wanting more attention paid to how academic frameworks reflect or channel the people they're supposed to represent, especially when that phenomenon is so prevalently flawed for autistic communities. Also, I just kept sticking on the book's use of "neuroqueer" and the language of "queerness" in general to demonstrate resistance to a hegemonic status quo, rather than (similarly to the point before this) staying rooted in and related to the lived experiences of queer people, especially neurodivergent queer people.
Positives: This book didn't attempt to essentialize autistic modes of language production and communication, but to understand multiple, simultaneous forms of autistic speech and silence. It's unabashedly and usefully autism-positive, it resists top-down diagnostic models of autism in favor of flexible understandings of thought and relationship processing, and many of its critical approaches and comments are really interesting (particularly in the introduction and the chapter on Frankenstein).
Neutralities: I expected more of a focus on "poetics," given the subtitle, but it might've been more appropriate to characterize this book as about "autism rhetorics" or "autism prosaics." There's simply much more of a focus on narrative fiction, rhetorical strategy, and clinical diagnostic language than what I would expect of "poetics."
Negatives: I worry that in so significantly broadening what counts as a potentially autistic form of language use, this book runs the risk of disconnecting theories and critical lens of autism rhetoric from the real, lived experiences of autistic individuals. I kept wanting more attention paid to how academic frameworks reflect or channel the people they're supposed to represent, especially when that phenomenon is so prevalently flawed for autistic communities. Also, I just kept sticking on the book's use of "neuroqueer" and the language of "queerness" in general to demonstrate resistance to a hegemonic status quo, rather than (similarly to the point before this) staying rooted in and related to the lived experiences of queer people, especially neurodivergent queer people.
September 3, 2020
A fascinating book. Very enjoyable!
I’m Autistic and I found a great deal of relatable content as well as content that helped put my own writing into more of a context. I’m not sure how to say that in a better way, but will think upon it a bit more and maybe come back to expand my review at a later date.
I’m Autistic and I found a great deal of relatable content as well as content that helped put my own writing into more of a context. I’m not sure how to say that in a better way, but will think upon it a bit more and maybe come back to expand my review at a later date.
Read
February 28, 2022I think it captures external elements of autistic utterance but Samuel Beckett is where to look for the fundamental disconnect from language as an interface to thought and feeling, let alone communication with others.
Read
August 30, 2025.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews