Authoring Autism: On Rhetoric and Neurological Queerness (Thought in the Act)

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With an unexpected, delightful turn to theorization of asexual and demisexual experiences as evidence of the autistic "demi-rhetorician"'s power, Yergeau concludes with an opening, especially for queer and trans studies. I am delighted to have learned so much about autism and behavioral development--two subjects I would not normally seek out. Yergeau in fact mentions in the first chapter that as both a queer person and an autist they are very wary of attempts to correlate autism and queerness, despite certain preliminary statistics that indicate that a greater percentage of autists are queer than the general population. On one hand, Authoring Autism is a thorough and thoughtful primer for any person, autistic or allistic, interested in understanding a wide range of issues relevant to autistic people in general from a high level.

autism's dynamism and haecceity do not make it "queer" (nor do they make it "mestiza," ugh), they simply indicate its conceptual vagueness.Authoring Autism will be appropriate for graduate courses in rhetorical theory, whether feminist, queer, disability, posthuman, material, or embodied.

Contrary to another review here, I don’t believe Yergeau is attempting to assimilate autism to queerness. Forged from a partnership between a university press and a library, Project MUSE is a trusted part of the academic and scholarly community it serves.This is without doubt the most thoroughgoing, rigorous, and creative work on authoring autism I have read.