dis/Humanity and Autism: Dehumanizing and Rehumanizing

This thesis aimed to explore the lived experiences of Autistic people, as articulated in online blogs written by Autistic authors. Experiences of dehumanization and counternarratives of rehumanization were the focus. This study was motivated by my lived experiences as an Autistic person. It included exploring my experiences as points of reference and comparing those expressed by the Autistic bloggers in this study. Autistic people have used the internet as a location to reclaim their voices and create counternarratives to the negative paradigms around autism. As part of my goal to explore counternarratives created by Autistic bloggers, I studied how Autistic people experienced intersections of marginalized identities. Non-Autistic voices in society predominate, including researchers, doctors, and parents. To promote Autistic narratives, one must look for their representatives where they organically thrive. The internet is one of these locations. For this study, I used a curated resource list created by an Autistic blogger of blog sites created by Autistic people. Using this resource, I constructed a narrowed list of Autistic bloggers who identified as having intersectional and marginalized identities. These identities included disabilities other than autism, 2SLGBTQIA+ identities, poverty, and race. Philosopher Rosi Braidotti (2013) told us that the classical ideal of ‘Man’ was the measure of all things. Braidotti said this ideal subject was equated with consciousness, universal rationality, and self-regulating behaviour, whereas those deemed “Other” were equated with inferiority. Those branded as Others are viewed as the negative counterpart of the conscious, universally rational, and self-regulating ethical subject. Their humanity is reduced through othering. Braidotti said “Anti-Humanism,” which rejected the restrictive notion of what counted as human, was a vital step in arriving at the idea of the “Post-Human.” Disability studies, intersectionality and post-humanism are used in the thesis as a framework to examine prevailing beliefs about the source of rights and agency and justify the reduction of rights and agency. An examination of this kind requires careful criticism of the roles played by structures in society in reducing rights and agency for certain individuals. Anti-humanism encourages holding to account those who historically and currently benefit from structural inequality and othering. Post-humanism encourages the continuation of momentum past this process of accountability, to a reconstruction of agency that includes those who would have been less-than-human subjects, non-human subjects, and even into an exploration of how the world we have historically thought of as non-living affects and is affected by agency. This thesis looked at the question of how safe it is for Autistic people to reject the centring of the human in a society where they still struggle to have full access to human rights and agency, and indeed, if there was a point in trying to reform restrictive notions of agency rather than creating a new understanding. In this study, I performed a critical discourse analysis. Through this analysis, I found that Autistic bloggers pushed the boundaries around restrictive ideas of agency and reconsidered the utility of moving forward with the concept of “the human” intact. They advocated for rehumanization in areas that intersected with multiple identities and facets of “the human” experience. I was prepared to find the questions I posed in this thesis indirectly alluded to by the bloggers through accounts of their life experiences. Instead, I found the bloggers displayed a keen awareness of how restricted notions of “the human” excluded Autistic people. They also demonstrated their ability to use the vocabulary of academia and advocacy, reinforcing the idea forwarded by Autistic self-advocates and critical scholars, that too much gatekeeping is done regarding who is considered experts in autism. The Autistic bloggers included in this study did not focus solely on their own experiences, preferring to expand their lens to take in the Autistic community and the allistic people around them. They advocated for the rehumanization of Autistic people in myriad ways, including redefining expertise and re-education of allistic people considered experts when they failed to include Autistic voices. This included research that was informed, directed, and performed by the Autistic community, academics, and advocates.

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