It seems that there has always been this labeling of the autistic individual as unimaginative, lacking in the ability to fully feel, to comprehend emotions, to accurately understand and use language. These are stereotypes constantly reinforced by even literature today, but authors like Stuart Murray, Amanda Baggs and DJ Savarese aim to dismantle these running stereotypes and to show how the autistic individual is as creative and comprehensive of language and emotion as any other non-autistic individual. Therefore, in this essay we aim to showcase the main arguments that these authors have contributed to the autistic community, laying out these stereotypes in fine detail, at times explaining their feelings about stereotypes brought upon them and showcasing the creative work of other autistic individuals.
In his book Autism, Murray outlines the conception of autism presented in diagnostic literature, breaking down the ‘triad of impairments,’ or the “idea that the core of autistic behavior can be understood in terms of deficits of three central concepts—communication, imagination, and social interaction […] that originated in the late 1970s” (Murray 25). He relates it from the 1994 DSM-IV’s criteria of “delayed or abnormal functioning in at least one of” the aforementioned triad’s concepts to dominant thought on the condition in mainstream society (Murray 18, 25). This pervasive ideology plays into the binary of what is autistic and what is non-autistic; it insists that autistic individuals, by nature’s design, cannot be imaginative or creative. As Murray aptly points out, this presentation of autism is based more on metaphor and subjective speculation. Creativity quotients exist only in the realm of testing flexibility in response to a given stimuli (i.e. testing individuals in designed settings), and to conflate the fact that many autistics respond to change or process their reality in a given way with an inability to partake in more artistic expression implies that the thoughts and connections autistic individuals make is inherently uninventive or lacking in originality within itself. Autistic individuals such as Baggs have contested this view of autistic thought as cold or without attachment or creativity. In her article “Cultural Commentary: Up in the Clouds and Down in the Valley: My Richness and Yours,” she describes the ways in which mainstream society views the non-autistic process of thought as “[taking] place with a good deal of cognitive fanfare, so that they can hear or see themselves thinking,” and “[involving] abstract and arbitrary symbolism of some kind,” that can “reflect back on itself.” She then juxtaposes that with views of othered, autistic thought processes as “[taking] place so quietly they can barely notice it’s there—if at all,” and with “much more direct relationships, connections, and patterns formed between one thing and another.” She states that her own relationship with the world in front of her and the patterns she notices inform her about her own interests and what she cares about and suggests that autistic thought such as this is not regarded as thought at all. If views on autistic thought processes and creativity are linked as Murray suggests, then Baggs’ words work to show the ways in which the binary of autistic/non-autistic work to erase entire portions of autistic identity and reality.
In Baggs discussion of her own experiences with autism, she explains how those with autism have always been cast apart from mainstream society. They have been deferred in subtle and blatantly obvious ways. Baggs expresses the knowledge that few people actively intend on excluding those with a disability, but the way in which our society is constructed creates, what she quotes from Cal Montgomery’s 1987 essay about wheelchair access, “physical and social customs that seem almost designed to shut me out.” This comparison paints a picture for those who are not autistic to better see the social barriers that have been formed against those with autism. Using a wheelchair is an obvious disability, it is one the open eye can see clearly on the street. Our world was not built with those who use wheelchairs in mind. It was created by and for able-bodied individuals, only recently have newer buildings been required by ADA standards to have wheelchair access. This is of course, the step into the right direction, it being a standard to have accessible design in all buildings and to not discriminate against or exclude an individual from a building because they can not gain access to it on their own.
Baggs compares this to the autistic person’s relationship to language. She explains that, “like counters, stairs, and drinking fountains, language was built mostly by non-autistic people, with the obvious results, and my biggest frustration is this: the most important things about the way I perceive and interact with the world around me can only be expressed in terms that describe them as the absence of something important.” Here she directly points out this valuable discussion on how autistic individuals interact with conventional language and that their form of interaction with it is more often that not seen, by those who do not have autism, as an absence of something. In her experience she has been made to feel by those who try to define her, that her interaction with and strategy for learning conventional language is the absence of speech, of language, of thought, of movement, of comprehension, of feeling and of perception. Instead of her being seen as a creative and unique human being, she is othered, she is told she is missing something, she is not whole, not right, that she needs to be fixed in some way or another. Instead of acceptance most autistic people are faced with this push to be treated or cured. Baggs pushes back against this by saying, “I am telling you these things not to instruct you on the particulars of the mind of an autistic person, but rather to sketch out an image of how I perceive the world, and the richness and worthiness inherent in those ways of perceiving. It is anything but empty, and it is so much more than a simple lack of something that other people have.” As Baggs points out, there is so much richness that those with autism add to our world, whether that be love, expression, a portal of growth and knowledge about a different way of being, literature, art, there’s so much an individual can add to our society, whether they be abled or disabled.
DJ Savarese is the perfect example of an autistic writer who has created some beautiful pieces to add to our list of literary works in whole. His poem “Alaska,” analyzed and interpreted by his father Ralph James Savarese in “Prologue: River of Words, Raft of Our Conjoined Neurologist” from See It Feelingly, is a creative poem that uses an analogy for his relationship to his autism and having need for a facilitator. He writes, “the trees hurt their great places, they lose their treasures, their lying leaves tread. freed there branches they try to yearn freedom but they fear it. trying to get freed points out their great hurt yearning long.” Here he uses what Ralph James explains is a literary stable called pathetic fallacy, where he “stages the problem of separation as one confronting the natural world.” DJ compares his yearning for freedom, for independence, for a separation from reliance on his facilitator to the trees yearning for freedom, freeing little bits of themselves, like their branches. This poem not only demonstrates the creative use of language by an autistic writer, but it conveys the message that autistic individuals can feel and relate to their world and the people in it.
Conceptions of autism in relation to what it is not are common, given the deficit model of psychology; this representation carries out into other areas of society and presents a static, one dimensional lived experience. These stereotypes can prove harmful for the autistic community by erasing portions of their identity and therefore their place within the society we live. Through our examination of these stereotypes’ origins with Murray and their impact on autistic individuals’ relationship with themselves and society at large with Baggs, this paper brought us to analysis of work by autistic poet Savarese that exists in opposition of these beliefs. Our point is not that autistic individuals that meet the exact criteria do not exist, but rather that autism presents in a variety of different ways outside of the given binary and that the reinforcement of ideals that suggest otherwise needs to be challenged.
Sources
Baggs, Amanda. “Up in the Clouds and Down in the Valley: My Richness and Yours.” Disability Studies Quarterly, vol. 30, no. 1, 2009.
Savarese, DJ. “Alaska”
Savarese, Ralph James. See It Feelingly: Classic Novels, Autistic Readers, and the Schooling of a No-Good English Professor. Duke University Press, 2018.
Murray, Stuart. Autism. New York, 2011.
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