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About The Author
Laurence Arnold
University of Birmingham
United Kingdom
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Introduction to the First Edition
By Larry Arnold
In ‘Hopi Culture and a
Matter of Representation,’ Lomayumtewa Ishii[1]
describes the excessive preoccupation of North American academic ethnology
and anthropology with the Hopi tribe to the extent that the representation of
’hopiland‘, as he describes it, has resulted in a
cultural archive (citing Said) that maintains and continues to perpetuate an ‘intellectual
colonisation’ over the Hopi people. As editor of this journal, I cannot help
but see the parallels with the scientific, and more recently, the disability
studies world’s preoccupation with autism, to the extent that in order to
maintain our own academic credibility We find ourselves having to to cite outside “ethnographers” to validate ideas that
had originally been introduced to this discussion by the autochthonous
autistic community itself.
It is with this background
in mind that ‘Autonomy’ has been set up by a small group of autistic
academics under the auspices of the Autreach Press,
an organisation formed for the purpose, which subscribes to the general
principles of the Autreach[2] group of autonomous
organisations who share the common aim of promoting greater autistic
autonomy, hence the title of this journal.
Indeed this mirrors the
experience that Sinclair[3] has described with the establishment
of the Autism Network International (ANI) after the experiences of attending
various academic conferences and meeting other autistic people, hearing time
and again papers about them, but not written by them.
Often the only role we as
‘Autists’ play on this circuit is that of the subjects of research, either as
volunteers or unwittingly when our autobiographic materials and many web
sites and forums have been trawled by ethnographers and ethnomethodologists
searching for readily available material.
I entered the academic
sphere many years ago, as I wanted to contribute my voice to the world of research
not, as Sinclair has famously described, a self narrating
zoo exhibit[4], but as someone
who could contribute to the wider discourse of what it means to be autistic
from within and to face the difficulties in restructuring the courses that
are taught about us, in my department and others. I have since taken on the
role of researcher seeking further to redefine that discourse.
I am however only one of
many autistics contributing as researchers in a diversity of academic fields.
Immediately I can bring others
to mind such as; Dr Dawn Prince Hughes in primate research, Dr Temple Grandin
in animal behaviour, Dr Stephen Shore in education and Michelle Dawson in
cognitive psychology.
Nevertheless, most of us
find ourselves insufficiently represented in the literature of scholarly
publishing. This is no great surprise, as accessing the normative and not to
say commercial values of academic publishing presents many barriers to an up
and coming autistic student struggling with the social conventions of University
let alone the
strictures and esoterica of peer reviewed publishing. It seems time and again
that we are swamped out by the non autistic
researchers, beating us to press and dominating the conference scene.
That is why we have
established ‘Autonomy’ as a peer reviewed journal upholding those same high
standards of academic publishing, yet giving access to would be authors, to
be reviewed by their actual peers, that is other autistic academics who inhabit the world within, in a way that goes beyond
mere ‘verstehen’.
It is also hoped that we
will be able to give a second airing to existing material that has never had
a proper academic outing and to provide a means by which the research world
will be enriched by having access to properly citeable insider material from
a great many academic fields.
To this end as an
introduction to the genre I am republishing Jim Sinclair’s seminal ‘Don’t
Mourn for Us’, accompanied by an early essay of my own, which I believe will
demonstrate something of what is meant by the phrase ‘critical autism
studies’.
Notwithstanding the
difficulties we face as a marginalised group making inroads into the academic
disciplines, it is so often the case that those disciplines themselves exist
within ‘silos’, failing to understand the contributions that other
disciplines have to make on each other.
To that end we will
include book reviews and paper reviews, giving the opportunity for academics
and others to comment on material from the differing perspectives of our own
fields of expertise. Perhaps a cognitive scientist will review a
sociologically based paper and in return accept a response from an arts and
cultural perspective, as I firmly believe we all have things to learn from
each other.
With all this in mind, I hope this introduction will support the first call
for papers to be issued this month
Works cited
[1] L. Ishii, "Hopi
Culture and a Matter of Representation," Indigenous Nations Studies
Journal, vol. 3, no. 2, 2002.
[2] Autreach_Network, "Autreach
Network," 2012. [Online]. Available:
https://autreach.backpackit.com/pub/1382191. [Accessed 2nd October 2012].
[3] J. Sinclair, "Autism Network International: The Development of a
community and it's culture.," 2005. [Online].
Available: http://www.autreat.com/History_of_ANI.html. [Accessed 16 June
2010].
[4] J. Sinclair, "Re: Autobiographies
<autism%94012300345553@sjuvm.stjohns.edu>," Bit.Listserv.autism,
1994.
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