'Outsider Science' and literary exclusion: A reply to denials of autistic imagination

Scientific narratives often assert that autistic people – supposedly predisposed to 'systemizing' and lacking empathy – are, by definition, indifferent to or confused by fiction. In a process exacerbated since the late 1990s, autistic ability has come to be associated somewhat exclusively with STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) areas. The standard implication is that the arts and humanities, and particularly literary studies, are the province of neurotypicals only. Yet the rarely questioned assumption that autistic people are automatically unlikely to enjoy, critically engage with or express themselves through literature has become problematic for a spectrum of reasons. Medically, the implications are considerable. Assumptions about STEM and autistic talent are encoded in certain questionnaires used to screen for autism, potentially making some autistic adults less likely to receive a diagnosis or indeed recognition – simply because they happen to read novels. Culturally, too, the dismissal of autistic literary sensibilities is troubling. It both signifies and reinforces deeper, dehumanizing suppositions that autistic people are devoid of imagination. Moreover, as widely disseminated scientific beliefs that autistic adults struggle to comprehend fiction have become steadfast, the past two decades have also yielded countless novels that depend on standard but often simplistic notions of autism for character construction. Tellingly, few 'autistic' characters in novels are ever portrayed reading fiction. In Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake (2003), an autistic adult is even depicted as ideologically (and destructively) opposed to the existence of art and literature in the world. In effect, the autism narratives in both science and fiction critiqued in this chapter collusively perpetuate what is becoming a barbarically clichéd assumption: that autistic people are good at either STEM subjects or nothing. I argue that this notion both underestimates and undermines autistic diversity, and address possible consequences of this. The chapter thus details where and why it is both scientifically and culturally necessary to rethink certain dominant theories which have hitherto excluded literary engagement – and by extension, imagination itself – from the namings, and the meanings, of adult autism.

The main scientific narratives of autistic ability critiqued in this chapter come from the University of Cambridge's Autism Research Centre (UCARC) and are led by the centre's director Simon Baron-Cohen (Professor of Developmental Psychopathology). The name and notion that most extensively characterizes Baron-Cohen's interpretation of autistic subjectivity is systemizing. Summarizing the UCARC's ongoing research into systemizing and autism, the centre's website defines the former: 'Systemizing is the drive to analyse or construct a system. A system is anything that follows rules' (my italics). The examples of systemizing listed on the website are noticeably geared towards the practical and the scientific. Systemizing can be 'mechanical', 'abstract' (e.g., 'number patterns'), 'natural' or 'collectible' (e.g., 'classifying objects'). Thus, the key feature of the autistic mind as defined by UCARC excludes any interest in people. Although UCARC is a cross-disciplinary unit, its principal investigators' work includes neuroscience, biochemistry, psychiatry and psychology: none of the centre's affiliates or collaborators represent the humanities.

I title the processes and perspectives of the present chapter 'Outsider Science'. The term was introduced by science historian Margaret Wertheim (2011) as an equivalent to 'Outsider Art' or Art Brüt. Wertheim surveys the work of independent scholars who had little formal scientific training and yet, through experiment, made pioneering contributions to physics, biology and chemistry. I name this chapter 'Outsider Science' for much less grand but more specific reasons. First, I am not a trained scientist: my critique of scientific autism research is essentially literary in its questions regarding narrative and representation, but also in its focus on a particular aspect of autistic subjectivities and identities – namely the relationship of autism to literature itself. But, second, the scientific research addressed in the chapter also constitutes Outsider Science. The authors whose influential constructions of autism I critique are not, to my knowledge, autistic. Their scientific research, although invaluable, remains 'outside' the condition it narrates. Third, the chapter concerns Outsider Science in a more hypothetical manner: I am arguing for greater recognition of autistic sensibilities and identities which have so far been marginalized from dominant narratives. Thus, while I cite hitherto neglected evidence that autism and literary engagement have coexisted, can coexist and do coexist in many adults, my emphasis is also intended to point towards a wider reality: the fact that dominant autism portrayals in both science and culture are problematically reductive; propagating notions of uniformity at the expense of diversity or, indeed, equality.

The emphasis on autism and STEM talents since the 1990s is part of a cultural shift that gives increased attention to autism as a condition that – contrasting with dominant associations in the preceding half-century – does not necessarily mean a drastically limited lifestyle for all individuals so diagnosed. Essentially, the most culturally prominent narratives have switched from sensationalizing 'classic' autism, as conceptualized by Leo Kanner (1943), towards sensationalizing what has crudely (and ominously) been termed 'high-functioning' autism, based primarily on Hans Asperger's research (1944). This intensified focus on autism as a condition that can sometimes coexist with spectacular talent – even if, for most of us, it does not – ostensibly celebrates autism and autistic potential. However, it incurs expectations that could actually reinforce the disablement of many autistic people.

I write as an academic whose qualifications and profession are based in literary studies, but also from the seemingly inescapable perspective of an adult diagnosed autistic. In critically reviewing the most influential narratives of a link between autistic talents and STEM subjects, I do not suggest that such associations are inaccurate but that they present a misleadingly incomplete profile of what it means to be, and be diagnosed, autistic. Autistic literary authors and scholars (not unlike autistic adults in STEM areas) most likely constitute a minority when the fuller autistic spectrum is considered. Yet, as later citations will show, there are innumerable autistic...