Autistic writing in a neuromixed space: reclaiming, reloading another mother tongue

The research project “Autistic Writing: reloading, reclaiming another mother tongue” aims to investigate autistic experiences, autism-led research, neuro-mixed rooms and autistic poetics. Through reading, writing and text/ theory discussions the study aims to find ways of thinking and talking about, and with, text that goes beyond and outside the neurotypical format. That involves questioning the forms of a text (when is it finished, when is it understandable, when is it authentic), and the content (depictions of neurodiverse people, situations and experiences).

Drawing on studies of autism and language, autism and literature, the project builds on knowledge developed over the past decade. Influential researchers such as Erin Manning and Brian Massumi, Remi Yergeau, Julia Miele Rodas and R. J Savarese have placed neurodiversity at the centre of artistic research, rhetoric and literary studies, with the result that a new field of knowledge is emerging. Autistic perception, autistic ways of using literary strategies and autistic rhetoric are expressed in old and familiar texts as well as in new and explicitly neuroatypical texts.

The methods in the study are collaborative, drawing on the fact that the researchers come from different backgrounds: literary composition, philosophy and sociology, with similar but slightly different interests. Letterwriting, text conversations and exploring the perspectives of the autistic communities are methods in this investigation. At the core of the project lies designing and running the course “Autistic Writing and Reading”, where pedagogy and poetics are analysed in relation to neurodiversity and artistic practice.

What so far has been discovered is the extreme multitude of autisms and neurodivergences that is often reduced to a diagnosis and deficit, something that needs to be “handled” or “treated”. By recognizing the difficulties autistic people struggle with because of a neurotypical society, literature begins to include aspects of the human that have been silenced. The artistic potential in the neurodivergent perception of the world and the poetic potential in the way autistic people read and write are visible in texts, articles and books published during 2022-2024.

Researchers

Elisabeth Hjorth, Hanna Bertilsdotter-Rosqvist, Jonna Bornemark, Anna Nygren