The Biopolitics and Bioeconomics of Autism
Majia Nadesan, Arizona State University
Autism is a fundamentally political signifier. That is, the meanings and senses of the signs and symptoms organized under the signifier "autism" are hotly contested even while there is vast consensus on the material reality of those signs and symptoms. A new form of advocacy, dubbed "biosociality" by Paul Rabinow, problematizes autism's classification as a medical disorder, arguing instead for the public to understand autism as a difference requiring acknowledgment and accommodation. In contrast, public health officials, school educators, and anxious parents tend to view autism as an "epidemic" threatening to strain families and public infrastructures. But no consensus exists on the causes of this purported autism epidemic. Many parents view autism as a disorder of modernity caused by industrial excesses and andated epidemiological risk technologies, particularly vaccination. Many autism researchers acknowledge the mediating role of unknown) environmental "factors" but are transfixed by the agentive power of gene alleles in shaping "autistic" outcomes. The discourse of the gene seduces, promising simultaneous cure and capitalization. Biosocial autism advocates see the outcome of this research as producing pre-natal testing, leading to a new eugenics cloaked in the guise of personalized technologies of the self: that is, autism advocates see pre-natal testing as shifting eugenic decision-making to prospective parents who then become responsibilized for their children's conditions. Autism is indeed a political signifier and the contestations over its meanings point to significant social conflicts over identity, responsibility, risk, and normality.
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