Reading case studies of people with autistic spectrum disorders: a cultural and media studies approach to issues of disability representation
Mitzi Waltz, School of Arts Design Media and Culture, University of Sunderland
Abstract
This research endeavours to interrogate the medical narratives upon which predominant ideas about autism have been built. Reading medical case studies as texts has gained a prominent place within cultural and media studies research in recent years. Using textual analysis and related tools, this paper examines a range of case studies: reports from the late 19th century that predate the formal naming and definition of autism, cases written by the most influential theorists during the first three decades of autism research (including Kanner, Baumer, and Bettelheim), and more recent case studies that attempt to employ "objective" measures of impairment as a foundation for medical narrative. It will look at the use of voice, structure, terminology, metaphor, and other fictive tools; historical and social context; and the process of constructing representations based on difference or "otherness." It will describe how these texts have contributed to the construction of a discourse about autism, highlighting issues of selectivity; and examine the medicalised ideology produced through this discourse. It will also examine two sets of alternative discourses-accounts written by parents of persons with autism, and accounts written by persons diagnosed as having an autistic spectrum disorder-and isolate points of convergence and divergence between these and the dominant medical discourse of autism. These lived experiences of autism challenge the medical model of the condition, encouraging examination of assumptions about normality, impairment, and difference that underlie that model, and foregrounding the issue of disablement.