Autism has generated a great deal of controversy, culturally, intellectually and politically. The context for this in recent years in France is unusual and has been the site of strong antagonism. These debates are political in terms of policy implications and disagreements along political lines but also entail the politics of knowledge, and the question of who has the right to speak for whom. Competing groups – parents, ‘experts’ and autistic adults have different claims to validity as knowledge-bearers. This epistemological validity is vital in creating wider public understanding and determining policy directions. Autism life-writing is a new phenomenon in French and contributes to this set of debates. In order to illuminate this further, this article will offer an account of the first best-selling memoir by an autistic individual in France. The book, L’Empereur, c’est moi, is by Hugo Horiot, and was published in 2013, at the height of the ‘autism battle’ in the French public sphere.
BettelheimB (1967) The Empty Fortress: Infantile Autism and the Birth of the Self. New York: The Free Press.
3.
CascioMA (2018) What are we talking about when we talk about autism? In: FeinERiosC (eds) Autism in Translation: Culture, Mind, and Society. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 251–62.
4.
ChamakB (2008) Autism and social movements: French parents’ associations and international autistic individuals’ organisations. Sociology of Health & Illness30(1): 76–96.
5.
ChamakB (2009) Autisme et militantisme: de la maladie à la difference. Quaderni, 68: 61–70.
6.
ChamakB (2010) Autisme, handicap et mouvements sociaux. ALTER – European Journal of Disability Research/Revue Européenne de Recherche sur le Handicap4(2): 103–15.
7.
ChamakBBonniauB (2013) Changes in the diagnosis of autism: how parents and professionals act and react in France. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry37(3): 405–26.
8.
CouserGT (2009) Signifying Bodies: Disability in Contemporary Life Writing. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
9.
CrichtonPCarelHKiddIJ (2017) Epistemic injustice in psychiatry. British Journal of Psychiatry Bulletin41(2): 65–70.
10.
DachezJ (2016) La Différence invisible. Paris: Delcourt/Mirages.
FerriBA (2011) Disability life writing and the politics of knowing. Teachers College Record113(10): 2267–82.
15.
FredetF (1979) Mais Madame, vous êtes la mère . . .Paris: Le Centurion.
16.
GironP (1978) La Mère empechée. Paris: Seuil.
17.
GrinkerRR (2015) Reframing the science and anthropology of autism. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry39: 345–50.
18.
HackingI (2009) How we have been learning to talk about autism: a role for stories. Metaphilosophy40(3–4): 499–516.
19.
HallA (2015) Literature and Disability. London: Routledge.
20.
HappéFFrithU (2009) The beautiful otherness of the autistic mind. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B364: 1345–50.
21.
HochmannJ (2012) Le Devenir des idées en pédopsychiatrie, à travers l’histoire de l’autisme. Neuropsychiatrie de l’Enfance et de l’Adolescence60(3): 207–15.
22.
HochmannJ (2016) Le Communautarisme dans la bataille de l’autisme. Psychiatrie Sciences Humaines Neurosciences14(3): 7–16.
23.
Holliday WilleyL (1999) Pretending To Be Normal. London: Jessica Kingsley.
JanoisS (2018) La Cause des autistes. Paris: Payot.
29.
LaurentE (2012) La Bataille de l’autisme: De la clinique à la politique. Paris: Navarin.
30.
LefèvreF (1990) Le Petit Prince cannibale. Paris: Actes Sud.
31.
LefèvreF (1995) Surtout ne me dessine pas un mouton. Paris: Stock.
32.
LiegghioM (2013) A denial of being: psychiatrization as epistemic violence. In: LeFrancoisBMenziesRReaumeG (eds) Mad Matters: A Critical Reader in Canadian Mad Studies. Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press, pp. 122–9.
33.
McGeerV (2009) The thought and talk of individuals with autism. Metaphilosophy40(3–4): 517–30.
34.
McGuireA (2016) War on Autism: On the Cultural Logic of Normative Violence. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
35.
MéadelC (2006) Le Spectre ‘psy’ réordonné par des parents d’enfant autiste. Politix (1): 57–82.
36.
Mille et une vies (2016) Interview with Hugo Horiot, 22September. Available at: www.hugohoriot.com.
O’DellLBertilsdotter RosqvistHOrtegaFBrownlowCOrsiniM (2016) Critical autism studies: exploring epistemic dialogues and intersections, challenging dominant understandings of autism.Disability & Society31(2): 166–79.
39.
OgburnC (2017) War on autism: on the cultural logic of normative violence. Disability & Society32(2): 275–8.
40.
OrchardV (2013) The ‘rendez-vous manqués’ of Francophone and Anglophone Disability Studies: the case of autism in cross-cultural context. Synergies Royaume-Uni et Irlande6: 53–73.
41.
PhilipC (2012) Scolarisation des élèves avec autisme en France: trente ans d’histoire. La Nouvelle Revue de l’adaptation et de la scolarisation60: 45–58.
42.
PhilipC (2014) Scolarisation et formation professionnelle pour les jeunes avec autisme: à la découverte de l’autisme. In: YvonDPhilipCRogéBde SchonenS (eds) Des neurosciences à la vie en société. Paris: Dunod, pp. 180–93.
43.
RattazC (2014) Special education and care services for children, adolescents, and adults with autism spectrum disorders in France: families’ opinion and satisfaction. Autism18(2): 185–93.
44.
RiosC (2018) Expert on your own child, expert on your own world: reinventing autism expertise(s). In: FeinERiosC (eds) Autism in Translation: Culture, Mind, and Society. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 251–62.
45.
RobertS (dir.) (2011) Le Mur. Océan Invisible Productions.
46.
RoseN (2006) The Politics of Life Itself: Biomedicine, Power, and Subjectivity in the Twenty-First Century. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
47.
Runswick-ColeK (2014) ‘Us’ and ‘them’: the limits and possibilities of a ‘politics of neurodiversity’ in neoliberal times.Disability & Society29(7): 1117–29.
48.
RyskampDA (2017) Stories of autism: what the rise of books on autism tells us about, well, autism. Disability Studies Quarterly37(1). Available at: http://dsq-sds.org/article/view/5526/4557.
49.
ShefferE (2018) Asperger’s Children: The Origins of Autism in Nazi Vienna. New York: WW Norton.
50.
SilvermanC (2011) Understanding Autism: Parents, Doctors and the History of a Disorder. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
TammettD (2006) Born on a Blue Day: A Memoir of Asperger’s and an Extraordinary Mind. London: Hodder & Stoughton.
55.
TimimiSMcCabeB (2016) What have we learned from the science of autism? In: Runswick-ColeKMallettRTimimiS (eds) Re-Thinking Autism: Diagnosis, Identity and Equality. London: Jessica Kingsley, pp. 30–48.
