Translation and untellability. Autistic subjects in autobiographical discourse

Abstract

This article discusses the conditions for and reception of auto biographies by autistic persons from a critical disability per spective. Taking as a point of departure theories of narrativity where storytelling is seen as an essential human trait and narrative as a prerequisite for the construction of a self, the article discusses different modes of representing autistic subjectivity, in some cases contradicting these assumptions. In some of the »canonized« autistic autobiographies, the narrative script of overcoming autism is strongly present. The article shows how this is not merely an adaptation to the expectations of the audience, but also a method strategically employed as a means to avoid objectification and to gain agency. Although some autobiographical representations of autistic personhood resist having to translate their experience or language to fit the narrative script of disability, audiences tend to appropriate them into the expected narrative trajectory of overcoming, thus rendering alternative representations of autistic personhood unacknowledged.