Dr James McGrath

Summary This entry outlines the history and progress of literatures relating to autism. Part I: Autism, Narrative and Agency introduces various hypotheses from psychiatric literature regarding autism, language and literacy, critiquing how these are both limited and limiting. Part II: Kanner, Asperger and a Note on terminology distinguishes the contrasting but often complementary definitions of autism as influentially conceptualized by Leo Kanner (1943) and Hans Asperger (1944), and addressing the troubling background of the latter’s research in Nazi-occupied Vienna. Part III: Transforming a Triad of Tropes: Theories of Mind, STEM, and Gender introduces the origins and problems of three dominant psychiatric theories of what constitutes autism, and how these relate to literature and its study. Part IV: Autism Replies: Life Writings appraises how autistic authors have helped to transform understandings of autism. Part V: The ‘New Classic Autism’: Restrictive Literary Tropes c.2003-13 examines how popular science and popular literature converged to establish restrictive stereotypes of autistic people as a high-function white male mathematicians and scientists. Part VI: Progressive Fictions 2002-2017: The Question of Autism details how lesser-known novels, especially those by women authors, began to critically articulate vital questions on how autism is conceptualized and experienced, focusing on novels by Pat Barker, Clare Morrall and L. W. Bonneville. Part VII: Reading the Double Empathy Problem in Fiction introduces the pioneering work of autistic sociologist Dr Damien Milton, demonstrating how his model of the ‘Double Empathy Problem’ may operate as a literary critical technique, using two novels by David Lodge as examples. Part VIII: Across the Lines: Autism and Poetry discusses poetry as a neurological and physical experience, with particular reference to works by Les Murray and Tito Rajarshi Mukhopadhyay. Part IX: The Autistic Canon: Retrospective Diagnosis and Re-membering details how, from outside and later, inside of the autistic community, authors have retrospectively identified autism in historical literary lives and fictional characters; the section also demonstrates the value of ‘re-membering’ as a literary practice in relation to autism. Part X: A First Full Cycle: Autism Representation to Autism Presentation concludes the entry by comparing four novels from a newly emerging phase in autism literature through emphasis on intersectionality and diversity, looking at how autistic women authors especially are finding and showing radical new ways to write autism.

On why, as scientists search for prenatal tests to detect autism, it will become increasingly urgent to scrutinise the stereotypes surrounding autism, both in culture and in science itself.

This experimental essay combines critical research with life writing and poetic forms to explore and begin defining ‘AutisTime’. As a choice, a state and a necessity, ‘AutisTiming’ is immersion within imagination. It involves daydreaming, is emphasised here as a root of creativity itself. The naming AutisTime is, in part, an answer to a question the author was frequently asked as a child, often with mild concern: What are you DOING all that time on your own in empty rooms? Against preconceptions that time alone for autistic people actually means loneliness, the essay positions autistic time alongside Anderson’s (1983) notion of simultaneity: the awareness and appreciation of shared co-existence beyond immediate living space. After discussing ‘imagined friendships’ with neurodivergent others in past, local settings, the focus grows global, to platform autistic voices (in particular from Black authors) alongside contemporary concerns in autism studies.

In this blog for World Autism Acceptance Week, James McGrath, an autistic poet and academic, advocates the value of “stimming” and explores how it relates to poetry. On autism, stimming and poetry as a dance for the mouth and mind.

Like Autism, poetry has its own patterns. Rhyme is repetition (and variation). Alliteration can be a sort of stimming for the mouth and the mind. There are also themes and experiences revered in poetry, which are rarely deemed appropriate in daily conversation. Illustrating how poems by Wordsworth and MacNeice might help us to articulate certain Autistic sensibilities, I discuss themes of childhood memory and anxiety about change. I also reflect on how poetry was the first form through which my own self-acceptance of Autism felt possible.

Naming Adult Autism is one of the first critiques of cultural and medical narratives of Autism to be authored by an adult diagnosed with this condition. Autism is a ‘social disorder’, defined by interactions and lifestyle. Yet, the expectations of normalcy against which Autism is defined have too rarely been questioned. This book demonstrates the value of the Humanities towards developing fuller understandings of Autistic adulthood, adapting theory from Adorno, Foucault and Butler. The chapters expose serious scientific limitations of medical assumptions that Autistic people are gifted at maths but indifferent to fiction. After interrogating such clichés in literature, cinema and television, James McGrath also explores more radical depictions of Autism via novels by Douglas Coupland, Margaret Atwood, Clare Morrall and Meg Wolitzer, plus poems by Les Murray and Joanne Limburg.

Pianist Nicky Hopkins (1944-1994) was one of the most gifted and prolific session musicians of his generation, playing on recordings by artists including The Kinks, The Who, The Beatles, and most extensively, The Rolling Stones. This essay considers Hopkins’ legacy through the lens of disability studies, discussing how physical illness prevented him from joining bands because he was unable to tour. As a point of contrast against Hopkins’ image as an abstinent and (at the start and end of his career) teetotal musician, narratives of ‘rock & roll excess’ surrounding the Rolling Stones are critiqued as part of a cultural lineage dating back to Romanticism. Through these focal points, the essay also confronts the complex relationship between disability studies and addiction.

While Lennon and McCartney’s class affiliations are ambiguous to degrees that should remain debatable, the depth and the detail in which working-class life defines their work have been overlooked, thus misrepresenting The Beatles’ cultural significance. Initial New Left criticisms of The Beatles—almost exclusively in response to one composition, ‘Revolution’ (1968)—have recently been adapted by commentators eager to portray The Beatles as a culturally and politically conservative force. I argue that early left-wing and recent right-wing criticisms of The Beatles’ legacy are misleading, because both overlook Lennon and McCartney’s different relationships to working-class culture. I also emphasize an importantly related, even more marginalized aspect of The Beatles’ history: the significance of black musical and cultural influences from Liverpool. The article seeks to offer new interpretations of songs including ‘Norwegian Wood’, ‘A Day In The Life’, ‘Revolution’, ‘Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da’ and ‘Working Class Hero’. KEYWORDS: : avant-garde; The Beatles; left wing; Liverpool; race; working class

DR ALISON TAFT, DR JAMES McGRATH and CAROLINE BURNLEY from Leeds Beckett University share their experiences of creative writing workshops delivered to those working in therapeutic practice, men under section in an NHS psychiatric in-patient unit, and women prisoners with a formal diagnosis of personality disorder (or traits consistent with).

In 2007 Mark Stokes et al., conducted research into the understanding of stalking and social and romantic functioning, of 25 autism spectrum disorder (ASD) adolescents and adults, in comparison to 38 typically developing (TD) adolescents and adults. Overall findings were that those with ASD did differ from their TD counterparts in both the sources of their learning, and their levels, of social and romantic functioning. ASD individuals were more likely to display inappropriate and intrusive behaviour with a propensity to exhibit stalking behaviours, towards all targets of interest. Subsequent research had similar results, although many participants and case study subjects were ASD males.  This thesis examines the understanding ASD females have of social and romantic boundaries in comparison to ASD males by replicating the 2007 Stokes et al., study. To my knowledge this is the first study to compare levels of understanding in this area by gender, with a focus on female gender, using only ASD diagnosed participants. Findings of this study had similarities to the original. For example, lack of understanding by ASD participants in navigating the boundaries and social nuances wrapped up with dating and forming relationships. What was also discovered within analysis was that in many areas, such as length of pursuit of a romantic interest, ASD females were found to give higher response numbers than their ASD male counterparts. ASD females would pursue their target for longer than ASD males. In some cases, even with a negative response from that target of interest. Previous research has highlighted the numbers of autistic men who have found themselves the subject of warnings from police to refrain from certain inappropriate behaviours, yet many have expressed not understanding why. The implications of findings within this study suggest that there may be numbers of autistic women suffering the same confusion regarding their behaviours who simply have not yet been identified. Further research is needed in this area to discover a truer picture of the numbers of ASD individuals, particularly female, impacted, and importantly to discover what those individuals feel would help them avoid future warnings or criminal justice involvement.

The First World War ‘haunts’ the present day and remains in the public consciousness through literature, film and national rituals such as Remembrance Day. This haunting is highly Gothic and exposes a socio-cultural trauma caused by the Great War. Then, as now, the male soldier’s body is a site of competing narratives regarding what is perceived as ‘ideal’, ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’. At the Great War’s outbreak, the soldier’s body was conflated with nationalism, eugenics, technological advancement and perceived as a machine-like technology of war. However, the soldier’s engagement with industrial war technologies exposed the fragility of the human body as well as the illusionary ideals and constructs which rendered it more than human.  Taking an interdisciplinary approach and using a range of theoretical models, this study investigates masculinity through representations of the soldier’s body in popular and lesser-known literatures of the interwar period. Interwar literature is haunted by the spectre of the war and socio-cultural anxieties regarding gender, masculinity, and physical and mental ‘norms’ are manifested in representations of the soldier’s body. The soldier’s body is explored as a symbol of Futurist, machine-like, warrior masculinity as well as a physically and mentally broken body juxtaposed against the idealised body of the cultural imagination. The body is revealed as an object belonging to the state with a specific use-value as well as an embarrassment for the state and society when this use-value is depleted or falls short of the national ideal or ‘norm’. Analysing bodily categorisation, idealised machine-like bodies, the mutilated body, the facially-disfigured body and the shell-shocked, mentally damaged, suicidal body this study argues that all these representations highlight a deviation from a ‘norm’ in the interwar period and that these ‘monstrosities’ still have a relevance to ideas of masculinity, mental health and disability in the present day.

Presenter: Ian McMillan. Producer: Faith Lawrence. Fellow guests: Kate Fox, Henry Normal, Alicia Kopf