Autistic Speculative Imaginings: Accessing and Creating Minor Literatures

Ryan B Collis OCT, BA, BScH, BEd, BScH, MA

Doctoral Student, Graduate Program in Education

Faculty of Education, York University

Social Model of Disability

• “For those who have never heard of the social model of disability it is best explained as the civil rights view of disablement. It separates impairment from disability and focuses on the responsibility that society holds for the disablement of others.”

Doyle, N. (2020, April 29). We Have Been Disabled: How The Pandemic Has Proven The Social Model Of Disability. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/drnancydoyle/2020/04/29/we-have-been-disabled-how-the-pandemic-has-proven-the-social-model-of-disability/

Autistic Autobiographies and Memoirs

https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/151200.Aspie_Autistic_Autobiography_and_Memoir_nonfiction_

What the Invisible Hand May Look Like

Deleuze and Guattari: “Minor Literature”

Addis, V. (2017, March 18). Deleuze and Guattari: “Minor Literature.” Victoria Addis. http://www.victoriaaddis.com/blog/gilles-deleuze-and-felix-guattari-minor-literature/

Slow Processing

• Whether they are on or off the spectrum, authors who encourage Slow Processing employ an unconventional form of literary organization with the following shared properties: they juxtapose different literary elements without reconciling them, use unconventional figurative language, and draw attention to unusual sensory stimuli with techniques like onomatopoeia and hyperbole. All of these characteristics require readers to expend more cognitive effort locating the meaning of particular language or the text overall. On a cultural level, this methodology supports the neurodiversity movement by recognizing autists’ literary and cognitive potential rather than treating their cognitive style as a deficit. (p. 151)

Barber-Stetson, C. (2014). Slow Processing: A New Minor Literature by Autists and Modernists. Journal of Modern Literature, 38(1), 147–165.

The Double Empathy Problem

https://www.facebook.com/autisticnottingham/posts/10158477768907634

Cognitive Style

• Derived from psychology, the phrase “cognitive style” denotes “a recurring pattern of perceptual and intellectual activity” (Schultz and Lavenda 121), and the way our brains are structured unconsciously predisposes us to adopt some patterns over others. Though human brains are largely similar, even small structural differences — such as those common among autists — can affect the style toward which a person tends and her engagement with an environment. As technological developments like functional magnetic resonance imaging have shown, autists’ brains exhibit more neural connectivity within regions than neurotypicals and less or “abnormally patterned” connectivity between regions (Courchesne and Pierce 226). Because of this structural difference, information moves through autists’ brains differently than it does for neurotypicals, and autists respond by employing what Courchesne et al. have called a narrower “spotlight of attention” (849). As a result, autists have “a wider temporal binding window” (Stevenson et al. 695), which means they need more time than neurotypicals, and often specific instruction, to shift their attention between stimuli — particularly from one sense to another (i.e., sight to hearing). Despite this bias, autists, like most other people, can employ different cognitive styles if they have sufficient time and motivation.

Barber-Stetson, C. (2014). Slow Processing: A New Minor Literature by Autists and Modernists. Journal of Modern Literature, 38(1), 147–165.

SciFi Pulse Interview with Ada Hoffmann

• SFP: How do we move most people’s perception of autistics away from characters like Sam in Atypical and towards autistic protagonists created and written by actually autistic authors?
• Ada Hoffmann: I think this has to start on the publishing or broadcasting company’s side. People are creating these stories, much more prolifically and openly than, say, ten years ago. It’s a matter of getting them into the mainstream. In the science fiction book world, so many openly autistic authors are coming onto the scene that I’m starting to lose count of them all; some have become finalists for our biggest awards; but the big publishing companies are the slowest to take notice. To my knowledge; in science fiction and fantasy for adults, we still haven’t had an #ownvoices author sell a book to any of the Big 5 publishers. All this activity and even the award nominations are coming from the margins. Most people read books and watch shows made by just a few companies, and it’s those companies that need to start investing more in authentic, nuanced autistic stories. The stories are already out there – they just need distribution.

https://www.scifipulse.net/ada-hoffman-talks-sci-fi-neurodiversity-and-advice-for-aspiring-writers/

• Works Cited
• Barber-Stetson, C. (2014). Slow Processing: A New Minor Literature by Autists and Modernists. Journal of Modern Literature, 38(1), 147–165.
• Bensmaia, R. (1994). On the Concept of Minor Literature From Kafka to Kateb Yacine. In Gilles Deleuze and the Theater of Philosophy (pp. 213–228). Routledge.
• Craine, M. (2020). Changing Paradigms: The Emergence of the Autism/Neurodiversity Manifesto. In S. K. Kapp (Ed.), Autistic Community and the Neurodiversity Movement: Stories from the Frontline (pp. 255–276). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-8437-0_19
• Finn-Kelcey, I. (2021). To what extent does the “Double Empathy Problem” impact on the assessment and grading of autistic students’ creative writing? Good Autism Practice (GAP), 22(1), 24–37.
• Gillespie-Lynch, K., Hotez, E., Zajic, M., Riccio, A., DeNigris, D., Kofner, B., Bublitz, D., Gaggi, N., & Luca, K. (2020). Comparing the writing skills of autistic and nonautistic university students: A collaboration with autistic university students. Autism, 24(7), 1898–1912. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362361320929453
• Kurowicka, A. (2020). “Aliens” Speaking Out: Science Fiction by Autistic Authors. Cultural Studies Review / Przeglad Kulturoznawczy, 3, 261–277. https://doi.org/10.4467/20843860PK.20.026.12586
• MacGowan, M. (2019). The Representation of Autism Narratives in Three Libraries at the University of Chapel Hill [Master of Science in Library Science]. University of North Carolina.
• Milton, D. E. M. (2012). On the ontological status of autism: The ‘double empathy problem.’ Disability & Society, 27(6), 883–887. https://doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2012.710008
• Pennisi, P., Giallongo, L., Milintenda, G., & Cannarozzo, M. (2021). Autism, autistic traits and creativity: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Cognitive Processing, 22(1), 1–36. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-020-00992-6
• Walsh, D. (2020, September 22). Ada Hoffmann talks sci-fi, neurodiversity and advice for aspiring writers. SciFi Pulse. https://www.scifipulse.net/ada-hoffman-talks-sci-fi-neurodiversity-and-advice-for-aspiring-writers/
• Zajic, M. C., & Asaro-Saddler, K. (2019). Issue Editors Foreword: Supporting Writers Across the Autism Spectrum. Topics in Language Disorders, 39(2), 123–127. https://doi.org/10.1097/TLD.0000000000000182