News and Events
Features
Narrative Theory Meets Disability Studies: Representing Autism and Mania in Fiction and Memoir
Disability & Narrative Panel April 22,
Nick Hettrick, Melanie Yergeau, Krista Paradiso
Nick Hetrick explained his research on the relationship between theory of mind and narrative in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon, a novel whose protagonist (readers come to understand) is a young boy with autism. Hetrick explained how the novel's narrative structure—which alternates between chapters which advance its murder-mystery plot and chapters which give readers a sense of what it's like to see the world the way the protagonist does—uses theory of mind as a strategy to engage readers. Theory of mind is a psychological term often used to describe the capacity to empathize and see things from another person's perspective which people with autism are said to lack. However, in order for the readers to get into the story and make sense of the chapters devoted to the protagonist's inner monologues, readers have to exercise theory of mind into order to buy into the narrator's way of viewing the world. Hetrick's goal is to look at the intersections between narrative theory and disability studies to see if—in cases where they intersect, such as The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime-these two fields can work productively together.
Melanie Yergeau examined several memoirs written by parents of children with autism, comparing different degrees to which they represent their children as deficient/normal, capable/incapable, autistic/human. She follows Paul Heilker's suggestion to view autism in terms of "rhetorical listening"—which emphasizes critical assessment of difference while recognizing difference—to arrive at a better paradigm for talking about autism than empathy, which tends to erase difference in a simplistic "I'm Ok; you're OK" kind of way. Yergeau suggests that by stressing empathy, parent autism memoirs—like Jenny McCarthy's Louder than Words and Mother Warriors-risk displacing autistic children completely by encouraging readers to see themselves in the autistic child's shoes. If the reader is in the autistic child's place, where is the autistic child? As an example of the rhetorical listening paradigm she advocates, Yergeau analyzes two other autism parent memoirs, Ralph Savarese's Reasonable People and James C. Wilson's Weather Reports from the Autism Front. Contra McCarthy, Savarese's and Wilson's memoirs emphasize that autism is part of their son's personality—not a disease to be overcome. As a result, for Savarese and Wilson the issues become communicating effectively with autistic language and facilitating their sons' self-advocacy, rather than fighting the dire scourge of autism which, in McCarthy's words, had her son "trapped behind a 'window,' unable to communicate, understand, or empathize." Rhetorical listening offers Yergeau a way to show how Savarese and Wilson's memoirs recognize difference in their sons, which prompts them to be open to renegotiating communication.
Krista Paradiso used Andy Behrman's Electroboy and Terri Cheney's Manic: A Memoir to interrogate gendered speech conventions and norms of sanity as stable concepts, using approaches based in feminist theory and disability studies. Both memoirs describe their author's experiences of the mania side of manic depression, but with very different effects. Although written from outside a manic state, the pace and sheer volume of action packed into Behrman's Electroboy attempts to mirror for the reader what is was like to be manic, taking the reader on a vicarious thrill ride. Cheney's Manic instead mirrors the author's ways of thinking and combines her own experiences with information about bipolar disorder for readers who are already interested in the subject. Contrary to the rollercoaster experience of reading Electroboy, Manic strives for normalcy and moderation. Rather than asking readers to imagine themselves as manic like Behrman does, Cheney dramatizes a situation at a party where she gets a chance to tell people what it's like to be bipolar. Paradiso argues that this scene demonstrates what Cheney hopes readers will take from her memoir, emulating the engaged party guests who ask perceptive but natural questions about her experience. These two memoirs offer different approaches to narrative and suggest to Paradiso that these gendered conventions are socially defined and that Behrman and Cheney's casting of the audience in different positions relative to the experiences in their stories demonstrates two different ways these authors work to refigure concepts of sanity and the structure of the memoir.
For more information about this and other Project Narrative events, check out their Web site.
