This book considers the many ways autistic lives have been dominantly storied historically, politically, socially, and culturally. Using a range of transdisciplinary theory, the author develops a theoretically rich approach termed ‘dis/orientation’, which breaks new ground for autism research’s understanding of everyday life, and everyday childhoods. The book uses stories of everyday life to provoke new analyses of what it means to talk about, live with, and become, an autistic child: these stories of schooling and education highlight what is done to autistic bodies, what is done by these bodies, and what becomes between them. This offers a way in to the theoretical work of dis/orientation; a practice and an ethic, that means remaining ever watchful for single orientations towards (and away from) autism and childhood, and the children living those childhoods. This leads to new disciplinary grounds, a reconceptualisation of the terrains of research and practice, not of the disordered and disembodied autistic mind, but of the embodied, lived, and everyday.
Author(s): Jill Pluquailec
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 269
City: Cham
Acknowledgements
Preface
Book Overview: Stories as Both Process and Product
A story of a project finding its place
The Gaze and Dis/orientation in the Book
Contents
List of Figures
1: Contextualising the Terrains
A Guide for Traversing the Terrains
Route A to B: The History of Autism and Childhood
Returning to the Start and Taking the Scenic Route
The Scenic Route: A Wondering and Wandering through the Terrains of Autism and Childhood
Terrains of Autistic Scholarship
References
2: Introducing a Theoretical Travel Guide
The Making of the Child through the Technology of Schooling
Psychologisation, Pathologisation and Familialisation
Neoliberal Technology of Self-Governance: Neuroscientism
Autism Is White. Autism Is Male. Autism Is Straight
Language
Autism Advocacy in North America
Parents’ Literature: A Specific Terrain
References
3: Theorising Dis/orientation
Disability and the Human
A Story to Introduce the Dis/child
Towards Theorising Dis/orientation
An Aside: Mums on 3rd of July
References
4: An Auto/ethnographic Story of Working Through Method/ology
‘Talking’
Recruitment
Introducing the Families
The Connors
The Goodwins
The Collective
‘Being’
‘Becoming’: Creative Analytic Practice
Moving Forward: Between Methodology and Ethics
References
5: The Ethics of Advocacy and Consent
Consent and Advocacy
Consent as Embodied and Ongoing
Joe’s Reminder of Risk
Advocating Otherwise
Stories Left Untold
Moving Forward: Ethics in Analysis/Ethical Analysis
References
6: Talking: The Rhizomes of Everyday Autism
More Than a Single Orientation, a Rhizome
Talking of Autism as Brain-Centred
Talking of Autism as Emotional Labour
Talking of Autism as a Mother’s Work
A (Temporary) New Entryway to Rhizome: Intervention
Collective Talk of Autism: Meeting Producing Autism
Talking of Autism as Biosocial
References
7: Being with/in Bodies
Being in Education
The Dis/child in Education
Policy and the Dis/child
Being and Ways of Knowing
Disembodied Play
Embodied Play: Den Building
Dis/orientating Play
Sharing Through Embodiment
A Nursery Trip: Slipping Back to Disembodiment
Window-Licking
Challenging Behaviour and Imagined Futures
Dis/orientating Window-Licking
References
8: Becoming: Towards a Critical Analysis of Autism, Childhood and Dis/ability
Biting in the Classroom
Collapsing Emotion into Behaviour: Autism and Challenging Behaviour
Dis/Orientating Emotion through Autism
Autism Marking Bodies
Inhuman Emotions (Impossible Emotions)
Dis/Orientating: Biting Otherwise
Saturday Morning Ballet Class
What Is Done by Bodies
Dis/Orientating: Contesting a Knowable Body
References
9: Take-home Messages from a Dis/orientated Terrain
Take-home Message 1: A New Research Agenda
Non-pathologising Autism Research
Autism Research and Childhood
Autism Research as Embodied
Take-home Message 2: A New Agenda for Education
For Educators of Autism
For Education Policy and Practice
The End
Postcards from Neitherherenorthere (Figs. 9.1, 9.2, 9.3 and 9.4)
References
Index
