Where the Wild Things Aren’t

Hacking is particularly interested in narratives of autistic people — autobiographies and novels written by autistic people and novels featuring them. 5 On his account, these narratives teach autistic people the “right” way to be autistic. They might focus their self-presentation — or, in Butler’s phrase, “performance” — on generally recognized manifestations of autism, such as difficulty making eye contact, or socializing, or understanding non-literal meaning, or tolerating scratchy textures. This line of thought derives from Foucault, who understood such effects not as a revelation of the repressive force exercised by the powerful on the powerless but as an instantiation of what he called the “positive” or “productive” manifestation of power. Each of us strives for legibility, and in doing so we actively participate in constructing our various identities.