Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T14:11:56.215Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Neurodiversity and the Revision of Book History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Gillian Silverman
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The field of neurodiversity offers new ways to think about the history of the book and the history of reading. Because autistic individuals—especially those marked by “classical” symptoms—often report a strong reliance on physical objects and a pronounced tendency toward sensory engagement, their interests coincide with those of book historians and reception critics who investigate the embodied reading experience and the material aspects of the book. Indeed, the textual practices of autistic individuals can resemble those of bibliophiles, who often enjoy touching and smelling books. But autistic textual engagement occasionally takes singular forms, thereby pushing historians of the book into surprising new territory. For example, many classical autists attest to an intense intimacy and intercorporeity with the material book. In so doing they create opportunities for reflecting on the interdependence of the human and nonhuman worlds.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 131 , Issue 2 , March 2016 , pp. 307 - 323
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2016

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Ablow, Rachel, ed. The Feeling of Reading: Affective Experience and Victorian Literature. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 2010. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Allen, Graham, Griffin, Carrie, and O'Connell, Mary. Readings on Audience and Textual Materiality. New York: Routledge, 2015. Print.Google Scholar
American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: DSM V. 5th ed. Arlington: Amer. Psychiatric Assn., 2013. Print.Google Scholar
Amsler, Mark. “Affective Literacy: Gestures of Reading in the Later Middle Ages.” Essays in Medieval Studies 18 (2001): 83–110. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baggs, Amanda. In My Language. YouTube. YouTube, 15 Jan. 2007. Web. 1 Sept. 2013.Google Scholar
Barron, Judy, and Barron, Sean. There's a Boy in Here: Emerging from the Bonds of Autism. Arlington: Future Horizons, 2002. Print.Google Scholar
Basbanes, Nicholas A. A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books. New York: Henry Holt, 1995. Print.Google Scholar
Belmonte, Matthew K. “Human but More So: What the Autistic Brain Tells Us about the Process of Narrative.” Autism and Representation. Ed. Osteen, Mark. New York: Routledge, 2007. 166–80. Print.Google Scholar
Bennett, Jane. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Durham: Duke UP, 2010. Print.Google Scholar
Bersani, Leo, and Dutoit, Ulysse. The Arts of Impoverishment: Beckett, Rothko, Resnais. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1993. Print.Google Scholar
Bérubé, Michael. “Disability and Narrative.” PMLA 120.2 (2005): 568–76. Print.Google Scholar
Biklen, Douglas. Autism and the Myth of the Person Alone. New York: New York UP, 2005. Print.Google Scholar
Bogdan, Deanne, Cunningham, James, and Davis, Hilary. “Reintegrating Sensibility: Situated Knowledges and Embodied Readers.” New Literary History 31.3 (2000): 477–507. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bogdashina, Olga. Autism and the Edges of the Known World: Sensitivities, Language, and Constructed Reality. London: Kingsley, 2001. Print.Google Scholar
Bogdashina, Olga Communication Issues in Autism and Asperger Syndrome: Do We Speak the Same Language? London: Kingsley, 2004. Print.Google Scholar
Bogdashina, Olga Sensory Perceptual Issues in Autism and Asperger Syndrome: Different Sensory Experiences, Different Perceptual Worlds. London: Kingsley, 2003. Print.Google Scholar
Brown, Bill. “Thing Theory.” Critical Inquiry 28.1 (2001): 1–22. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, Matthew. The Pilgrim and the Bee: Reading Rituals and Book Culture in Early New England. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 2007. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cesaroni, Laura, and Garber, Malcolm. “Exploring the Experience of Autism through Firsthand Accounts.” Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders 21.3 (1991): 303–13. Print.Google Scholar
Chartier, Roger. Preface. The Order of Books: Readers, Authors, and Libraries in Europe between the Fourteenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1994. vii-xi. Print.Google Scholar
Coole, Diana, and Frost, Samantha. “Introducing the New Materialisms.” New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics. Ed. Coole, and Frost, . Durham: Duke UP, 2010. 1–43. Print.Google Scholar
Cormack, Bradin, and Mazzio, Carla. Book Use, Book Theory: 1500-1700. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2005. Print.Google Scholar
Crain, Patricia. The Story of A: The Alphabetization of America from The New England Primer to The Scarlet Letter. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2000. Print.Google Scholar
Cressy, David. “Books as Totems in Seventeenth-Century England and New England.” Journal of Library History 21.1 (1986): 92–106. Print.Google Scholar
Dames, Nicholas. The Physiology of the Novel: Reading, Neural Science, and the Form of Victorian Fiction. New York: Oxford UP, 2007. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davis, Natalie Zemon. “Beyond the Market: Books as Gifts in Sixteenth-Century France.” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 33 (1983): 69–88. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gates, Henry Louis Jr. The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism. New York: Oxford UP, 1988. Print.Google Scholar
Genette, Gérard. The Work of Art: Jmmanence and Transcendence. Trans. Goshgarian, G. M. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1997. Print.Google Scholar
Gerland, Gunilla. A Real Person: Life on the Outside. Trans. Tate, Joan. London: Souvenir, 1997. Print.Google Scholar
Gissing, George. Books and the Quiet Life: Being Some Pages from the Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft. Portland: Mosher, 1914. Print.Google Scholar
Goldstein, Philip, and Machor, James. Introduction. New Directions in American Reception Study. New York: Oxford UP, 2008. xi-xxviii. Print.Google Scholar
Grandin, Temple. Thinking in Pictures: My Life with Autism. 2nd ed. New York: Vintage, 2006. Print.Google Scholar
Gundaker, Grey. Signs of Diaspora / Diaspora of Signs: Literacies, Creolization, and Vernacular Practice in African America. New York: Oxford UP, 1998. Print.Google Scholar
Haven, Cynthia. “Stanford Acquires Late Professor's Renowned Collection of ‘Association Copies.‘” Stanford Report. Stanford U, 12 Mar. 2008. Web. 1 Sept. 2013.Google Scholar
Haverkort, Marco, and Roder, Jan H. de. “Poetry, Language, and Ritual Performance.” Journal of Historical Pragmatics 4.2 (2003): 269–86. Print.Google Scholar
Hendriks, Ruud Jan. Autistic Company. Trans. Richards, Lynne. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2012. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jackson, Holbrook. The Anatomy of Bibliomania. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 2001. Print.Google Scholar
Jackson, Leon. The Business of Letters: Authorial Economies in Antebellum America. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2007. Print.Google Scholar
Jackson, Leon “The Talking Book and the Talking Book Historian: African American Cultures of Print—the State of the Discipline.” Book History 13 (2010): 251–308. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kanner, Leo. “Autistic Disturbances of Affective Contact.” Classic Readings in Autism. Ed. Donnellan, Anne M. New York: Teacher's College P, 1985. 11–52. Print.Google Scholar
Kidd, David Comer, and Castano, Emanuele. “Reading Literary Fiction Improves Theory of Mind.” Science 18 Oct. 2013: 377–80. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kittler, Friedrich A. Discourse Networks, 1800/1900. Trans. Metteer, Michael and Cullens, Chris. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1990. Print.Google Scholar
Kools, Femke. “Literature and Charles Darwin.” Maastricht University Webmagazine. Maastricht U, 21 May 2003. Web. 1 June 2014.Google Scholar
Lacey, Simon, Stilla, Randall, and Sathian, K. “Metaphorically Feeling: Comprehending Textural Metaphors Activates Somatosensory Cortex.” Brain and Language 120.3 (2012): 416–21. Print.Google Scholar
Littau, Karin. Theories of Reading: Books, Bodies, and Bibliomania. Cambridge: Polity, 2006. Print.Google Scholar
Manning, Erin. “Toward a Leaky Sense of Self.” Always More than One: Individuation's Dance. Durham: Duke UP, 2013. 1–15. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mayhew, Robert J. “Materialist Hermeneutics, Textuality and the History of Geography: Print Spaces in British Geography, c. 1500-1900.” Journal of Historical Geography 33.3 (2007): 466–88. Print.Google Scholar
McGann, Jerome. The Textual Condition. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1991. Print.Google Scholar
McHenry, Elizabeth. Forgotten Readers: Recovering the Lost History of African American Literary Societies. Durham: Duke UP, 2002. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McKenzie, D. F. Making Meaning: “Printers of the Mind” and Other Essays. Ed. McDonald, Peter D. and Suarez, Michael F. Amherst: U of Massachusetts P, 2002. Print.Google Scholar
Mills, Bruce. “Autism and Imagination.” Autism and Representation. Ed. Osteen, Mark. New York: Routledge, 2007. 117–32. Print.Google Scholar
Moylan, Michelle, and Stiles, Lane, eds. Reading Books: Essays on the Material Text and Literature in America. Amherst: U of Massachusetts P, 1996. Print.Google Scholar
Mukhopadhyay, Tito Rajarshi. How Can I Talk If My Lips Don't Move? Inside My Autistic Mind. New York: Arcade 2008. Print.Google Scholar
Mukhopadhyay, Tito Rajarshi “More than a Thing to Ignore: An Interview with Tito Rajarshi Mukhopadhyay.” Interview by Ralph James Savarese. Autism and the Concept of Neurodiversity. Spec. issue of Disability Studies Quarterly 30.1 (2010): n. pag. Web. 1 Sept. 2013.Google Scholar
Nell, Victor. Lost in a Book: The Psychology of Reading for Pleasure. New Haven: Yale UP, 1988. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Park, Clara Claiborne. The Siege: The First Eight Years of an Autistic Child. Boston: Little, 1982. Print.Google Scholar
Parsi, David. “Touch Machines: An Archeology of Haptic Interfacing.” Diss. New York U, 2008. Print.Google Scholar
Plato. Theaetetus. Trans. Jowett, Benjamin. Rockville: Arc Manor, 2008. Print.Google Scholar
Price, Leah. How to Do Things with Books in Victorian Britain. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2012. Print.Google Scholar
Prince, Dawn. “The Silence Between: An Autoethnographic Examination of the Language Prejudice and Its Impact on the Assessment of Autistic and Animal Intelligence.” Autism and the Concept of Neurodiversity. Spec. issue of Disability Studies Quarterly 30.1 (2010): n. pag. Web. 1 Sept. 2013.Google Scholar
Punday, Daniel. Narrative Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Narratology. New York: Palgrave, 2003. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Radway, Janice A. “Reading Is Not Eating: Mass-Produced Literature and the Theoretical, Methodological, and Political Consequences of a Metaphor.” Book Research Quarterly 23 (1986): 7–29. Print.Google Scholar
Ricoeur, Paul. “Appropriation.” Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences: Essays on Language, Action, and Interpretation. Ed. and trans. Thompson, John B. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1981. 182–93. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Savarese, Ralph James. “Gobs and Gobs of Metaphor: Dynamic Relation and a Classical Autist's Typed Massage.” Inflexion 5 (2012): 184–223. Print.Google Scholar
Savarese, Ralph James “Lobes of Autobiography: Poetry and Autism.” Stone Canoe: A Journal of Arts and Ideas from Upstate New York 2 (2008): n. pag. Web. 1 Sept. 2013.Google Scholar
Savarese, Ralph James “Towards a Postcolonial Neurology: Autism, Tito Mukhopadhyay, and a New Geo-Poetics of the Body.” Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies 4.3 (2010): 273–90. Print.Google Scholar
Serres, Michel. The Five Senses: A Philosophy of Mingled Bodies. New York: Continuum, 2008. Print.Google Scholar
Shaddy, Robert A. Books and Book Collecting in America, 1890-1930. Lewiston: Mellen, 2000. Print.Google Scholar
Silverman, Gillian. Bodies and Books: Reading and the Fantasy of Communion in Nineteenth-Century America. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 2012. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Solomon, Andrew. Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity. New York: Scribner, 2012. Print.Google Scholar
Tanselle, G. Thomas. Introduction. Other People's Books: Association Copies and the Stories They Tell. Chicago: Caxton Club, 2011. 1–19. Print.Google Scholar
Thiemann, Anna, and Kern-Stähler, Annette. “Metaphor and (Dis)Embodiment: Inside the Autistic Mind.” Yearbook of Research in English and American Literature 24 (2008): 215–31. Print.Google Scholar
Thomson, Rosemarie Garland. Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature. New York: Columbia UP, 1996. Print.Google Scholar
Warhol, Robyn R. Having a Good Cry: Effeminate Feelings and Pop-Culture Forms. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 2003. Print.Google Scholar
Weusten, Josje. “Narrative Constructions of Motherhood and Autism: Reading Embodied Language beyond Binary Oppositions.” Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies 5.1 (2011): 53–69. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Willey, Liane Holliday. Pretending to Be Normal: Living with Asperger's Syndrome. London: Kingsley, 1999. Print.Google Scholar
Williams, Donna. Autism and Sensing: The Unlost Instinct. London: Kingsley, 1998. Print.Google Scholar
Williams, Donna “Experiencing Autism: An Interview with Donna Williams.” Interview by Douglas Biklen. Tash Connections 28.6 (2002): 15–21. Print.Google Scholar
Williams, Donna The Jumbled Jigsaw: An Insider's Approach to the Treatment of Autistic Spectrum “Fruit Salads.” London: Kingsley, 2006. Print.Google Scholar
Williams, Donna Nobody Nowhere: The Extraordinary Autobiography of an Autistic. New York: Harper, 1994. Print.Google Scholar
Williams, Donna “Notes.” Not Just Anything: A Collection of Thoughts on Paper. London: Kingsley, 2004. 96. Print.Google Scholar
Wysocki, Anne Frances. “Opening New Media to Writing.” Writing New Media: Theory and Applications for Expanding the Teaching of Composition. Ed. Johnson-Eiola, Wysocki, Johndan, Selfe, Cynthia L., and Sirc, Geoffrey. Logan: Utah State UP, 2004. 1–41. Print.Google Scholar
Yergeau, Melanie. “Circle Wars: Reshaping the Typical Autism Essay.” Autism and the Concept of Neurodiversity. Spec. issue of Disability Studies Quarterly 30.1 (2010): n. pag. Web. 1 Sept. 2013.Google Scholar
Yergeau, Melanie “Clinically Significant Disturbance: On Theorists Who Theorize Theory of Mind.” Disability Studies Quarterly 33.4 (2013): n. pag. Web. June 2013.Google Scholar
Zboray, Ronald, and Zboray, Mary Saracino. “Books, Reading, and the World of Goods in Antebellum America.” American Quarterly 48.4 (1996): 587–622. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar