aut(hored)ism
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background image perseveration
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background image defense theory (of mind)
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Neurotypicals outnumber autistics. This seems to be the golden rule when considering autism, composition, and audience awareness.

Composition scholarship is just beginning to touch on the phenomenon of autism and what it means for writing instructors. In “Neurodiversity,” Ann Jurecic (2007) claimed that compositionists need to find balance between social and cognitive theories of writing. She suggested revisiting Linda Flower’s research from the 1980s, especially her idea of “egocentric” student writers, writers who are unable to empathize with their readers (p. 432).

Per Jurecic, “audience awareness” has become re-pathologized: I fear that it may be too easy for composition instructors to assume that their autistic students are egocentric—solely because they are autistic. Although Jurecic emphasized that she does not seek to be biologically deterministic, danger is imminent in cognitivism (p.436). Autism is as various and as difficult to neurologically define as is normalcy.

Jurecic’s move toward cognitive models of disability and composing do not appear in College English without response. Jay Dolmage and Cynthia Lewiecki-Wilson critique Jurecic’s reliance on an autie/NT binary: despite her mention of social models of autism, they assert, “…she remains rooted in a normate stance—from invoking a single monolithic form of the academic essay to assuming the central (invisible and normal) position that enables ‘us’ to diagnose others and make judgments about ‘them’” [emphasis added] (314). Similarly, Paul Heilker suggests approaching disability and able-bodiedness by means of a “continuum” (319).

Because autism is the 1 and neurotypicality is the 149, autistic existence has been catalogued as an unfortunate neurodivergency, as lack of empathy, as deficit.

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