Autistic Disturbances: A Review (Not Mine)

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Autism has a particular language, one that has been extensively recognized, researched, and described by clinical theorists, literary scholars, and autism (self)advocates” Rodas writes in her groundbreaking book on Autistic poetics, Autistic Disturbances. Through discussing the features of Autistic voice and examining various novels, short stories, and even diagnostic literature through the lens of Autistic rhetoric, Rodas illustrates the outsider, outlaw status of Autistic voice and culture. Rodas’ book title is intentionally ironic, playing on the title of a 1943 book by Leo Kanner, Autistic Disturbances of Affective Contact, while underlining the ways Autistic voice disturbs the status quo.

Rodas plays literary detective, showing the reader celebrated works of literature unknowingly employing the poetics of Autistic voice, demonstrating that the aesthetic of Autistic voice is highly valued in the undiagnosed while the same lovely structures of language are pathologized in the diagnosed. Autistic Disturbances is an academic book, not a light read. But for those who enjoy digging into philosophy, literature, and poetics (the study of how language is used to create art and meaning) Rodas has created the book of our dreams. I am drinking deeply from Autistic Disturbances in my own academic work, responding to Rodas’ lovely invitation at the conclusion of the book: “I close these pages with an apostrophic call to absent and invisible partners to invent new categories, to add to and rearrange this project, and to explore and challenge its boundaries.” (page 192)