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Naming Adult Autism: Culture, Science, Identity

Paperback by McGrath, Dr. James

Naming Adult Autism: Culture, Science, Identity

£35.99

ISBN:
9781783480418
Publication Date:
19 Dec 2018
Language:
English
Publisher:
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Imprint:
Rowman & Littlefield International
Pages:
190 pages
Format:
Paperback
For delivery:
Estimated despatch 24 - 29 Aug 2026
Naming Adult Autism: Culture, Science, Identity

Description

Naming Adult Autism is one of the first critiques of cultural and medical narratives of Autism to be authored by an adult diagnosed with this condition. Autism is a 'social disorder', defined by interactions and lifestyle. Yet, the expectations of normalcy against which Autism is defined have too rarely been questioned. This book demonstrates the value of the Humanities towards developing fuller understandings of Autistic adulthood, adapting theory from Adorno, Foucault and Butler. The chapters expose serious scientific limitations of medical assumptions that Autistic people are gifted at maths but indifferent to fiction. After interrogating such clichés in literature, cinema and television, James McGrath also explores more radical depictions of Autism via novels by Douglas Coupland, Margaret Atwood, Clare Morrall and Meg Wolitzer, plus poems by Les Murray and Joanne Limburg. Follow this link to see James McGrath in conversation with Kelly-Anne Watson at Leeds Beckett University: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQOotRZRzv4 Follow this link to view a content breakdown of the above interview: https://www.academia.edu/36406389/Naming_Adult_Autism_A_Conversation_winter_2017_ Follow this link to read a 'Seeking Sara' blog interview with James: https://seekingsara174.wordpress.com/2018/08/19/639/

Contents

Introduction/ 1. Outsider Science and Literary Exclusion: A Reply to Denials of Autistic Imagination: Childhood Autism and the Psychiatric Imagination/Autism and the Machine/ Computer Coding and/as Literature: Douglas Coupland's Microserfs/ Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake: Autism and Literary Exclusion/ Inaccuracies in Baron-Cohen's "Minds Wired for Science" Narrative/ Bias in the Adult Autism-Spectrum Quotient Test (2001)/ Re-membering Autistic Imagination: Asperger, Wing, and Harro L./ Silberman's Neurotribes: Science, Science Fiction and Autism/ Autistic Responses to Atwood's Oryx and Crake/ The SySTEMizing Focus and its Implications for Autistic Diversity/ 2. Metaphors and Mirrors: The Otherness of Adult Autism/ Picking Up The Mirror: Enfreaking Normalcy/ Infantilizing Adult Autism in Diagnostic Observations/ Autism and Disorder: Foucault, Confinement and Cultural Fear/ The Screen as Mirror: The Office (UK) and the Neurotypical Gaze/ Post-Curious: Adult Autism as Cultural Spectacle in Big Bang Theory and

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