Hi everybody. Here are some questions you might consider as you write reading responses (or just prepare for class on Tuesday).
- Ralph Savarese argues that “With respect to autism, the question becomes: how to attend to the history of damaging assumptions about the disorder while also acknowledging the actual neurological differences that underpin it? Such differences are themselves culturally shaped and interpreted, to be sure, but they cannot be neatly managed by a pure social-constructionist perspective.” In other words, brain physiology and culture both shape autistic experience in fundamental ways. How does Higashida represent the roles of his brain and his culture with regard to his autistic experience?
- What does Peter Elbow mean by “resonant voice”? Do you see signs of a resonant voice in Higashida’s memoir? If so, how does he make the words on the page feel like signs of himself? What writing techniques help him pull that off?
- How does Higashida’s fiction compare to his nonfiction?
- What new terms did you encounter in this week’s reading? Which of these terms seem helpful? What do they mean? How might they help you understand new ideas or write in new ways?
- According to Joseph Strauss, what are some of the problems with the medical and cognitive models of autism? How might these problems be addressed?
- According to Joseph Strauss, what are “three qualities of the autistic vision”? Do you see these qualities at work in Higashida’s writing? Does his writing demonstrate any qualities not accounted for by Strauss’s “three qualities”?
