Representing Autism: Culture, Narrative, FascinationFrom concerns of an 'autism epidemic' to the MMR vaccine crisis, autism is a source of peculiar fascination in the contemporary media. Discussion of the condition has been largely framed within medicine, psychiatry and education but there has been no exploration of its power within representative narrative forms. Representing Autism is the first book to tackle this approach, using contemporary fiction and memoir writing, film, photography, drama and documentary together with older texts to set the contemporary fascination with autism in context. Representing Autism analyses and evaluates the place of autism within contemporary culture and at the same time examines the ideas of individual and community produced by people with autism themselves to establish the ideas of autistic presence that emerge from within a space of cognitive exceptionality. Central to the book is a sense of the legitimacy of autistic presence as a way by which we might more fully articulate what it means to be human. |
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Common terms and phrases
ability adult Anthropologist on Mars Asperger Asperger Syndrome Asperger's audience Autism Speaks autistic child autistic children autistic presence autistic savant Baggs Balsamo Barnaby Barnaby Rudge Bartleby Bartleby's becomes Bettelheim Biklen Bissonnette central chapter character children with autism condition contemporary context Curious Incident Daniel Isn't Talking diagnosis difference disability studies discussion Donna Williams Douglas Biklen especially example fascination fiction figure film focus Garland-Thomson girls Grandin Haddon's Hollywood human idea of autism idiocy idiot images impairment interaction Kanner Kaufman kind Larry Bissonnette London look masculinity metaphor mother narrator National Autistic Society Night-Time notes notion novel observation Oliver Sacks parents person with autism photograph portrayal possible produced programme Rain Raun relationship representation of autism savant seen sense Silent Fall Snow Cake social Son-Rise specific staring story Tammet Temple Grandin tion Tito understanding Uta Frith vaccine visual writing