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Quote by Anne McGuire

“Whether the autistic subject is inscribed as 'nearly' developed or 'under' developed, developmental discourses always situate the autistic subject as partially developed and thus not fully human. [...] Developmentalist discourses frame the autistic subject in need of advocacy as a kind of development project, the autistic body becomes understood as 'develop-able.' The autistic is, in other words, framed as one who needs to be taught humanness.”

Quote by Anne McGuire

Book:War on Autism: On the Cultural Logic of Normative Violence
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War on Autism: On the Cultural Logic of Normative Violence

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Anne McGuire

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“As it represents and thus conceives of autism as a threat to the normative individual and social body, contemporary advocacy work issues an effective and powerful 'call to arms' against autism. The orientation of contemporary advocacy is clear: to be a 'good' autism advocate is to be positioned 'against' autism, to 'fight' it, 'combat' it, 'defeat' it, and so on. . . It is this war on autism that I take as my focus for the remainder of this book. I do this so as to interrogate how a militarized autism advocacy is systematically producing and sustaining a social environment that is hostile to autistic difference—an environment that, as we shall see, structures and supports possibilities for violence against those who embody autistic difference.”

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“While increasing numbers function to expand out, increasing odds conjure an atmosphere of enclosure and confinement. Growing odds tell an allegorical story of a circle that is closing in zeroing in on the '1,' which is, inevitably your '1.' To borrow the tagline from a 2010 Autism Speaks PSA, 'autism is getting closer to home.”

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“Within dominant discourses of autism advocacy, the autistic subjectivity—located simultaneously in the perpetual past (e.g. developmentally 'too slow' and always late) and the future (e.g. yet-to-be developed)—is discursively foreclosed from being (existing) in the privileged and agentive time of the 'now.' Via a kind of time-sensitive investment logic, autism is understood not as a being but as a happening—a costly body, a disruptive threat, a risky trend, and so on—a happening, moreover, that is happening fast.”

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“In the ratio, as autism rates are understood to be increasing, the autistic 1 stays the same; it is rather the non-autistic population that seems to be getting smaller. . . The ratio works, in effect, to structure a rivalry or competition—a kind of Foucaultian 'agon' or contest—between constructed oppositions: autism/nonautism, pathology/health, underdevelopment/development, cost/benefit.”

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Book:War on Autism: On the Cultural Logic of Normative Violence
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“As per the terrorist narrative, the story of autism is told as a kind of 'spreading' pathology, infiltrating normative populations .. Knowing no borders or barriers, autism is framed as .. infiltrating homes, moving next door, and hiding in otherwise normative bodies. Figures of terror, in Bush's words, 'hide in the shadows' (Bush, 2001). Says the voice of autism in Cuaron's film [I am Autism]: they are 'invisible until it's too late' (Cuaron, 2009).”

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Book:War on Autism: On the Cultural Logic of Normative Violence
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