Abigail Weber<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dr. Foss<\/p>\n\n\n\n
ENGL 384<\/p>\n\n\n\n
April 29, 2020<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Troubleshooting<\/em> and the Undermining of Social Issues in Dystopia<\/p>\n\n\n\n The definition of \u201cdystopia,\u201d according to Merriam-Webster, is \u201can imagined world or society in which people lead wretched, dehumanized, fearful lives.\u201d Dystopian literature is a large category, spanning classic works of required high-school reading like 1984 <\/em>and Fahrenheit 451<\/em> and recent popular works of young adult fiction like The Hunger Games <\/em>and Divergent<\/em>. At its heart, dystopian literature forces the reader to confront a horrific possible future and contemplate what current trends in our society might lead humanity down such a brutal path. Autistic author Selene dePackh likely intended to shine a light on the disturbing trends and rhetoric surrounding autism today and how they might lead to a dystopia if unchecked in her novel Troubleshooting<\/em>. However, many austistic individuals already lead \u201cdehumanized\u201d and \u201cwretched\u201d lives as a result of our current ableist and disableist society, calling into question how much dePackh really needed to change the setting to highlight anti-autistic prejudice. By setting its story of autistic oppression in a dystopian future with a dramatically different political system, Troubleshooting <\/em>lost an opportunity to examine the dystopian society that many autistic and otherwise neurodivergent or disabled people experience today.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Troubleshooting<\/em>, the main character, Scope Archer, is branded with a tattoo that marks her as autistic and removes her rights without her consent. She states that \u201ctattooed, [she] was no longer entitled to due process\u201d or the \u201cpresumption of innocence\u201d before being subjected to forced medication, institutionalization, experimental procedures, or electroshock therapy (dePackh 5). However, autistic children, and some adults, face the same specters of involuntary abusive \u201ctreatment\u201d and institutionalization without due process under the system of guardianship (Autistic Self Advocacy Network 1). \u201cAlmost every country\u201d has a system of guardianship under which disabled individuals assigned a guardian \u201ccannot choose where to live, where to work, who to be friends with, and who to marry without their guardian\u2019s consent,\u201d while the guardian is free to ignore the wishes of the person in their custody (Autistic Self Advocacy Network 1). They lose the \u201cusual rights and responsibilities\u201d of citizens without being legally recognized as \u201cno longer a citizen\u201d (dePackh 4). The law does not announce it is taking away the rights of disabled and autistic people by declaring them no longer citizens or branding them with tattoos. DePackh does not draw a comparison between the tattoo system and the guardianship system; she does not discuss how one led to the other, the ableist ideas underlying both, or the similarities between the two. A reader with background knowledge of guardianship can draw the parallel, but one of the biggest problems with guardianship is how little the general public knows about it. Without this knowledge, the tattoo and its accompanying restrictions simply become more set-dressing that establish how terrible the book\u2019s society is, without prompting introspection or reflection on its contemporary precursors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Troubleshooting <\/em>does later engage with neurotypical guardianship of autistic people, but again renders its criticism irrelevant through its future setting. Scope has trouble living independently, particularly keeping track of monthly expenses, as a result of her autism. To deal with this, she takes in and ultimately marries an allistic man who handles the tasks she has trouble with. He quickly becomes abusive and controlling, and Scope has difficulty escaping him. This is an unfortunately common situation: some estimates place disabled people at almost twice the risk for intimate partner violence compared to their non-disabled peers, and even conservative estimates place them at a significantly higher risk that others (Breiding and Armour 455). Disabled people are at risk for intimate partner violence in part because their \u201cincreased dependency on others for long-term care\u201d makes it difficult for them to leave abusive partners (Nosek et al. 178). The University of Michigan notes that disabled or elderly survivors requiring additional resources can add yet another barrier to escaping abusive relationships alongside those, like financial dependence and the fear of retaliatory violence, that their neurotypical and able bodied peers also face (\u201cBarriers to Leaving\u201d). However, dePackh undercuts this important point by explaining Scope cannot escape because \u201cnew<\/em> domestic violence laws [don\u2019t] favor\u201d her (emphasis added), making it a recent development only relevant to the society and legal setup of the book (dePackh 168). This implies that before the dystopian future detailed in the book began, Scope would have handily escaped from her abusive relationship. Scope\u2019s relationship could have played out along similar beats in today\u2019s society, considering the numerous barriers to leaving an abusive relationship and the disadvantages disabled people have when navigating the law and dependence. Instead, Troubleshooting <\/em>ignores the complex forces that push autistic people into abusive relationships and limit their ability to escape, replacing them with a clear-cut law passed by an openly misogynistic and disableist government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n By placing her narrative against a backdrop of a dramatically different future, dePackh makes her points on the treatment of autism feel irrelevant to the present sociopolitical system. She fails to connect the issues in the novel to their predecessors in contemporary America. Although readers with background knowledge of autistic issues or disabled advocacy may be able to make these connections, the text itself fails to illuminate them. This is particularly odd because the future described in Troubleshooting<\/em> is not a distant one where current ideas of autism are forgotten. The narrator and protagonist is 15 in 2031, and the book was published in 2018, meaning that the United States completely transformed over Scope\u2019s short lifetime from our current society to the one depicted in Troubleshooting<\/em>. Despite this tremendous change all occurring while she was alive, Scope treats society as if it has always been this way, which might have been a powerful commentary on how the dystopia described in the book is not so different from modern America to an autistic child in the hands of an ableist caregiver\u2014if the novel had ever mentioned this implication of Scope\u2019s age. The short timeline could have helped to emphasize how close to dystopia the American political system is for autistic people already, but instead it serves to detach the world of the book from the real world through distracting, improbably radical shifts in the way the United States is structured. Readers are not left realizing how close we are to the world of Troubleshooting <\/em>or questioning what part they play in preventing such a future. Instead, they are simply glad the world is not like that.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Word Count: 1057<\/p>\n\n\n\n I hereby declare upon my word of honor that I have neither given nor received unauthorized help on this assignment. -Abigail Weber<\/p>\n\n\n\n Works Cited:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBarriers to Leaving.\u201d Abuse Hurts, <\/em>Regents of the University of Michigan, 2009,\u00a0www.stopabuse.umich.edu\/about\/barriers.html<\/a>. Accessed Apr. 28, 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Breiding, Matthew J. and Brian S. Armour. \u201cThe association between disability and intimate\u00a0partner violence in the United States.\u201d Annals of Epidemiology<\/em>, vol. 25, no. 6, June 2015, pp. 455-457. ScienceDirect<\/em>, doi.org\/10.1016\/j.annepidem.2015.03.017.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cDystopia.\u201d Merriam-Webster.com. <\/em>Merriam-Webster Incorporated, 2020,\u00a0www.merriam-webster.com\/dictionary\/dystopia<\/a>. Accessed Apr. 28, 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Invitational Summit on Supported Decision-Making and the Transition to the Community:\u00a0Conclusions and Recommendations, <\/em>October 18-19, 2016, Autistic Self Advocacy Network, June 7, 2018. autisticadvocacy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/SDM-Summit-Conclusions-and-Recommendations.pdf<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nosek, Margaret A., et al. \u201cVulnerabilities for Abuse Among Women with Disabilities.\u201d\u00a0Sexuality and Disability<\/em>, vol. 19, no. 3, Sept. 2001, pp. 177-189. ProQuest<\/em>, DOI:10.1023\/A:1013152530758.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Abigail Weber Dr. Foss ENGL 384 April 29, 2020 Troubleshooting and the Undermining of Social Issues in Dystopia The definition of \u201cdystopia,\u201d according to Merriam-Webster, is \u201can imagined world or society in which people lead wretched, dehumanized, fearful lives.\u201d Dystopian literature is a large category, spanning classic works of required high-school reading like 1984 and … Continue reading “Abigail’s Final Exam: Prompt 1”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":82,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[32],"tags":[85,182,86],"class_list":["post-2191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-take-home-final-examinations","tag-final-exam","tag-selene-depackh","tag-troubleshooting"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcJhts-zl","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dislit2020.chris-foss.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dislit2020.chris-foss.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dislit2020.chris-foss.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dislit2020.chris-foss.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/82"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dislit2020.chris-foss.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2191"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.dislit2020.chris-foss.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2191\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2192,"href":"https:\/\/www.dislit2020.chris-foss.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2191\/revisions\/2192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dislit2020.chris-foss.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dislit2020.chris-foss.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dislit2020.chris-foss.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}