Emily Saunders
Foss
ENGL384-02
Word Count: 1126
I pledge. –Emily Saunders
Rhetoricity: The Voice of Autism
Consider this: human beings have a fascination with language, with communication, and use it in every action that they take. Words are prescribed to objects, people, abstract concepts, animals, relationships, et cetera, and they are used to convey endless messages across endless modes of communication. There are very few (if any) ways in which human beings do not exist and communicate at the same time. In particular, voice (both literal and metaphorical) is often taken for granted as essential to the human experience, but what happens when that voice doesn’t conform to the standards set forth by the masses? What if your communication looks different? What if your language doesn’t match the one prescribed to you? Autism is frequently treated and discussed in ways that disregard the personhood, and therefore voice, of people with autism, despite their rich, albeit different, experiences with language.
A close look at Melanie Yergeau’s Introduction to her book, Authoring Autism, and Ralph James Savarese’s essay “Toward Postcolonial Neurology: Autism, Tito Mukhopadhyay, and a New Geo-poetics of the Body” shows an intense focus on the ways in which language and autism interact. Though they take two differing approaches to the subject—Savarese focusing primarily on the experiences and words of Tito Mukhopadhyay, and Yergeau focusing on (non)rhetoricity—both works critically engage with the topic, arguing against common conceptions and prejudices.
Yergeau spends much of her introduction discussing her idea of rhetoricity—what it is, how it’s used, and the politics of being able to participate in it. She writes, “It is not uncommon. . . for rhetoricians to claim that rhetoric is what makes one human. . . [its] precondition for humanness or personhood is typically and deeply connected to how we conceive sociality, or our modes of relating and relatedness with our (neurotypically human) surrounds” (Authoring Autism 6). By this, she means that rhetoric—or the meaning-making system by which we as social animals live—governs both our society as well as how we as individuals relate to it. This is a pretty straightforward concept but becomes twisted when brought into atypical contexts. Consider how, for example, characters representing a minority are portrayed on television. Black men are the funny guy, the athlete, the criminal, and generally angry. Black women are “crazy”, hypersexual, matriarchs, and welfare queens. Members of the LGBT community are flamboyant, dramatic, caricatures, and often victims of violence. The disabled . . . well, the disabled are hardly visible to begin with. All of these tropes are rhetorical tools used to define and confine minority groups in order for the majority (straight, cis-gendered white folk) to maintain power and control.
In the case of disability studies—and more specifically autism—this can be not only degrading but dehumanizing, which Yergeau goes on to explore in her introduction as well. People with autism are often framed as being nonrhetorical (Authoring Autism 5). But, if rhetoric is what makes us human, as we discussed earlier, then what does that mean for the autistic? Do they not compose stories, interact with the rhetoric-laden world around them, and communicate? Scholarly literature would have you believe, as Yergeau points out, that “In all things discursive, autism represents decided lack” (Authoring Autism 7). The disability, according to this literature, inhibits the autistic from being able to meaningfully interact with and produce rhetoric, despite copious evidence of the opposite. The difference is, well, difference. Autistic rhetoric may look, sound, and/or feel different than that produced and consumed by neurotypical folk. However, this preconceived idea that rhetoric—and therefore humanity—must mimic one specific kind is what keeps autistic rhetoric from being integrated into modern literature and scholarship. There’s no effort to include and explore the rhetoricity of the autistic, and that is what ultimately keeps them from being able to establish their own voice.
What, then, does autistic rhetoric look like? How exactly does an autistic person produce and consume it? Ralph James Savarese takes an interesting stance on the subject, entering the conversation through discussion of “severely” autistic author Tito Mukhopadhyay (Savarese 5). Savarese is quick to point out Mukhopadhyay’s use of language and how it starkly undermines the current conception of people with autism as being nonrhetorical, including a staggering number of quotes from the young author’s works. Mukhopadhyay writes, at only eight years old, “One day I dream that we can grow in a matured society where nobody would be ‘normal or abnormal’ but just human beings, accepting any other human being—ready to grow together” (The Mind Tree 90). By including this particular quote, as well as emphasizing the age at which Mukhopadhyay wrote it, Savarese effectively challenges the idea of nonrhetorical people with autism. The young author clearly has a voice, has rhetoric to be shared, has a way of consuming rhetoric and translating it into something he understands, and that is an important thing to notice.
On top of the words themselves, Savarese takes time to discuss the physicality of Mukhopadhyay’s language, and how the difference in the author’s proprioception (“a sensory modality that can be defined as an awareness of one’s body in space” [10]) informs his rhetoric. The purposeful manipulation of voice in his book, The Mind Tree, sometimes in first person and sometimes in the third, speaks to the disconnect felt by the author between his personhood and his body (Savarese 10). Throughout the essay, Savarese’s purpose is to highlight and underscore the unique and rich way in which Mukhopadhyay uses his voice in his book. Of course, the young author is but one person, and one voice among many that deserve to be heard.
The important thing to remember is that rhetoric—language, relations, consumption, production—is not limited to one kind of format. Similar to how different languages express similar idea, or how there are different genres of writing, of poetry, of music and media, the language of autism isn’t somehow less than that of a person without it. It’s just different. Yergeau and Savarese both attempt to point this out in their own ways throughout their works, as have many other scholars as the disability studies scholarship expands over time. One tackled the concept of rhetoricity head on, emphasizing its importance and the significance of excluding an entire group of people from it. The other delves into the specific language of one autistic author in particular, exploring the difference in special relation to that of a neurotypical person and challenging the conception that people with autism—especially those who are nonverbal—are somehow incapable of meaningfully relating to and producing language. Both of them work together and individually to break down the harmful stereotypes and de-humanization of people with autism in order to allow them to establish their own voice in its stead.
Works Cited
Mukhopadhyay, Tito. The Mind Tree. New York: Arcade, 2003.
Savarese, Ralph James. “Toward a Postcolonial Neurology: Autism, Tito Mukhopadhyay, and a New Geo-poetics of the Body.” 2010.
Yergeau, Melanie. “Introduction: Involution.” Authoring Autism, Duke University Press, 2017, pp. 1–34.
