Autism and SelfNarration Positionality Disclosure and Collective MeaningMaking

Autism and Self-Narration: Positionality, Disclosure, and Collective Meaning-Making ICI Autism Series, June 28, 2018 By Sara M. Acevedo, Ph. D

Self-Narration • The stories we tell not only challenge, but also transform the stories that are told about us “without us”. See Nothing About Us Without Us : Disability Oppression and Empowerment by Jim Charlton (1998)

Positionality • What does it mean to position oneself (one’s social location) within the social hierarchy of knowledge production and what is the cultural and political impact of doing so?

Disclosure • The implications of disclosure are multiple; Disclosure inevitably opens up a space of contestation whereby to question, challenge, and upturn unexamined assumptions and dominant narratives.

Collective Meaning-Making • Cultivating cross-setting solidarity becomes necessary when working toward collective liberation.

Discussion • Self-narration, as a political and cultural process, upsets and often transforms dominant ideas and representations of ‘other bodies’.

Discussion II • Positioning one self, not only in terms of one’s intersecting social and bodily identities, but also in terms of how those identities influence knowledge production is necessary; working toward ethically responsive social movements necessitates ongoing self-reflection.

Discussion III • Disclosure is a political endeavor; when we disclose outside the parameters established by the law, which are protected by confidentiality acts such as FERPA, we risk targeting and institutional violence.

• In a world that prioritizes medical and ‘professional’ understandings and practices over our own embodied experiences – after all, we are the “real experts” of our lives – collective meaning-making is revolutionary. There are, of course, a range of possibilities as well as limitations when doing so. See The Real Experts: Readings for Parents of Autistic Children edited by Michelle Sutton (2011)