Kevin Gotkin presents at Disability Studies conference

Monday, July 16, 2012

---

Annenberg doctoral student Kevin Gotkin presented the paper "Witnessing Autism: (In)communicability and the Peripheries of the Vertical Pronoun," at the Society for Disability Studies Conference in Denver, CO recently.

Abstract:

What does it mean to witness autism? If “autism speaks,” who is talking? To whom does it beckon? And how? This paper examines the epistemological boundaries of autism through the notion of witnessing, specifically seeking to understand how first-person accounts of the autism spectrum can explain the relationship between language and testimony. Three central texts are analyzed: The Way I See It: A Personal Look at Autism & Asperger’s by Temple Grandin, Look Me In the Eye: My Life with Asperger’s by John Robison, and “In My Language” by A M Baggs. In considering the production and content of each, I arrive at a reimagined notion of the witness that dispenses with the “eyewitness” in favor of the “I-witness.” Through the vertical pronoun, autism is both transgressed as a clinical label and deepened as a form of testimony.