Neuroqueering interpersonal communication theory: listening to autistic object-orientations

ABSTRACT

Employing rhetorical listening, I attend to the ways autistic authors narrate their relationships with objects in blogs/vlogs. These authors implore readers to engage with autistic object-orientations, unsettling the dominant assumptions undergirding some of our discipline’s foundational interpersonal communication theories, including theories of symbolic interaction, uncertainty management, and self-disclosure. These narratives reveal possibilities for cultivating theoretical orientations and disciplinary practices that are inclusive of neurodivergence. They also highlight the unjust power relations pervading interpersonal communication theory, provide insight into possibilities for transforming these systemic constraints, and reveal critical intersections and innovations among interpersonal communication, rhetoric, and interdisciplinary object-oriented studies.

KEYWORDS:

• autism
• objects
• neuroqueer
• interpersonal communication
• rhetorical listening

Acknowledgements

I would like to send my sincerest gratitude to the anonymous reviewers and all the editors involved in this themed issue for their rigorous and detailed attention to this article. Also, thank you to Emily Schreiber—a former student at Denison University—who helped compile literature and served as a sounding board in the early stages of this research.

Notes

1 Brenton J. Malin, “Communicating with Objects: Ontology, Object-Orientations, and the Politics of Communication,” Communication Theory 26, no. 3 (2016): 236–54.

2 Jordan Allen and Nicole Allen, “The Promise of a Nonhuman Turn for CIFC Scholarship,” Annals of the International Communication Association 43, no. 4 (2019): 287–315.

3 For example, see Alexander R. Galloway, “The Poverty of Philosophy: Realism and Post-Fordism,” Critical Inquiry 39, no. 2 (2013): 347–66; Melanie Yergeau, Authoring Autism: On Rhetoric and Neurological Queerness (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018).

4 For example, see Leslie A. Baxter and Bryan Asbury, “Critical Approaches to Interpersonal Communication,” in Engaging Theories in Interpersonal Communication: Multiple Perspectives, 2nd ed., ed. Dawn O. Braithwaite and Paul Schrodt (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2015), 189–201; Julia Moore, “Where Is the Critical Empirical Interpersonal Communication Research? A Roadmap for Future Inquiry into Discourse and Power,” Communication Theory 27, no. 1 (2017): 1–20.

5 Moore, “Where Is the Critical Empirical Interpersonal Communication Research?” 9.

6 Krista Ratcliffe, Rhetorical Listening: Identification, Gender, Whiteness (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2005).

7 Justine E. Egner, “‘The Disability Rights Community Was Never Mine’: Neuroqueer Disidentification,” Gender & Society 33, no. 1 (2019): 141.

8 Dawn O. Braithwaite often calls attention to ableism in interpersonal communication studies in her research; for example, see Dawn O. Braithwaite and Lynn M. Harter, “Communication and the Management of Dialectical Tensions in the Personal Relationships of People with Disabilities,” in Handbook of Communication and People with Disabilities: Research and Application, ed. Dawn O. Braithwaite and Teresa L. Thompson (Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2000), 15–30.

9 Jimmie Manning, “A Constitutive Approach to Interpersonal Communication Studies,” Communication Studies 65, no. 4 (2014): 432–40.

10 Allen and Allen, “The Promise of a Nonhuman Turn for CIFC Scholarship.”

11 Baxter and Asbury, “Critical Approaches to Interpersonal Communication,” 199.

12 Allen and Allen, “The Promise of a Nonhuman Turn for CIFC Scholarship.”

13 Julia Moore and Jimmie Manning, “What Counts as Critical Interpersonal and Family Communication Research? A Review of an Emerging Field of Inquiry,” Annals of the International Communication Association 43, no. 1 (2019): 42.

14 Allen and Allen, “The Promise of a Nonhuman Turn for CIFC Scholarship,” 310.

15 For example, see George Herbert Mead, The Philosophy of the Act, ed. Charles W. Morris with John M. Brewster, Albert M. Dunham, and David Miller (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1938/1972); Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979); Maurice Nevile, Pentti Haddington, Trine Heinemann, and Mirka Rauniomaa, eds., Interacting with Objects: Language, Materiality, and Social Activity (Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing, 2014).

16 Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); Ian Bogost, Alien Phenomenology, Or What It’s Like to Be a Thing (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012).

17 James R. Taylor and Elizabeth J. Van Every, The Emergent Organization: Communication as Its Site and Surface (Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2000); Daniel Robichaud and François Cooren, eds., Organization and Organizing: Materiality, Agency, and Discourse (London: Routledge, 2013); Anna Turnage, “Electronic Discourse, Agency, and Organizational Change at Enron Corporation,” Western Journal of Communication 80, no. 2 (2016): 204–19; Laurie E. Gries, Still Life with Rhetoric: A New Materialist Approach for Visual Rhetorics (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2015).

18 Galloway, “The Poverty of Philosophy,” 357.

19 Yergeau, Authoring Autism.

20 For example, see Emma Williams, Alan Costall, and Vasudevi Reddy, “Children with Autism Experience Problems with Both Objects and People,” Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders 29, no. 5 (1999): 367–78; Paula Ramos Pimenta, Jésus Santiago, and Ana Lydia Santiago, “Harmfulness of the Autistic Object to Its Indispensability for Autism Clinically in Psychoanalysis,” Ágora 19, no. 2 (2016): 339–56.

21 Yergeau, Authoring Autism.

22 Paul Heilker and Melanie Yergeau, “Autism and Rhetoric,” College English 73, no. 5 (2011): 486.

23 Ibid., 487.

24 Ibid., 488.

25 Jordynn Jack, “On the Limits of Human: Haggling with Burke’s ‘Definition of Man,’” in Burke in the Archives: Using the Past to Transform the Future of Burkean Studies, ed. Dana Anderson and Jessica Enoch (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2013), 84–98; see also Kenneth Burke, “Definition of Man,” The Hudson Review 16, no. 4 (1963–1964): 491–514.

26 Jack, “On the Limits of Human,” 91.

27 Ibid., 92.

28 Ibid.

29 Heilker and Yergeau, “Autism and Rhetoric,” 494.

30 Jack, “On the Limits of Human,” 94, 92.

31 Ibid., 95, 94.

32 Yergeau, Authoring Autism.

33 Ibid., 6.

34 Ibid., 8.

35 Ibid., 12.

36 Ibid., 71.

37 Ibid., 24.

38 Ibid., 27.

39 Ibid., 72.

40 Heilker and Yergeau, “Autism and Rhetoric,” 490.

41 Steve Duck, Rethinking Relationships (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2011).

42 Heilker and Yergeau, “Autism and Rhetoric,” 491.

43 Ratcliffe, Rhetorical Listening, 26.

44 Ibid. original emphasis.

45 Ibid., 29.

46 Three searches were conducted between 2014 and 2018, every time this manuscript was revised. Because of this time lapse, some blog/vlog sites no longer exist but their perspectives are still significant in terms of relevance and permanence.

47 Julia Bascom, “The Obsessive Joy of Autism,” Just Stimming …  (blog), April 5, 2011, http://juststimming.wordpress.com/2011/04/05/the-obsessive-joy-of-autism/; Cynthia Kim, “What’s so Special about a Special Interest?” Musings of an Aspie (blog), November 7, 2012, http://musingsofanaspie.com/2012/11/07/whats-so-special-about-a-special-interest/; Arman Khodaei, “Addicted to the Box Office!” Empower Autism Now (blog), June 17, 2011, http://empowerautismnow.com/2011617addicted-to-the-box-office-html/; “Overcoming Star Wars,” Empower Autism Now (blog), March 12, 2012, http://empowerautismnow.com/2012312overcoming-star-wars-html/; misplaced mermaid, “The Gift of Being an Autistic Parent,” misplaced mermaid (blog), January 22, 2014, http://misplacedmermaid.wordpress.com/2014/01/22/the-gift-of-being-an-autistic-parent/; Tina Shelley, “Yes I Sleep with Stuffed Animals; What’s It to Ya?” Empower Autism Now (blog), May 24, 2013, http://empowerautismnow.com/2013524yes-i-sleep-with-stuffed-animals-whats-it-to-ya-html/.

48 adultswithautism, “Autism/Aspergers Turning Special Interests into a Career,” YouTube, February 10, 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V97uCHfx9kE; Anja Melissa, “Aspergers Girl—Special Interests,” YouTube, July 5, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGirExLl0LA; brokenharbour, “Asperger’s and Object Obsession Stories,” YouTube, June 17, 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P87ASjD6Xjc; Alyssa Huber/Lushia’s Neurodivergent Life, “Asperger’s and Attachment to Objects,” YouTube, November 14, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRr1PqBGOFY; invisible i, “What Are Autism Special Interests?” YouTube, August 7, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPmGa6mjq1o; Arman Khodaei, “How Obsessions Impact Individuals w/ Autism/Asperger’s Syndrome: Explained by an Autistic Individual,” YouTube, September 11, 2010, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OzT8X5QV_Y; “Insights from an Autistic: Obsessions Are an Identity,” YouTube, January 10, 2011, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CnaYWdzSlQ; Remrov’s World of Art & Autism, “Autism and Special Interests—Remrov’s World of Autism #2,” YouTube, October 29, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7uMAoBWU7I; Amythest Schaber, “Ask an Autistic #13—What Are Special Interests?” YouTube, May 29, 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytWwFr5_pbY; streamofawareness, “Autism: Don’t Destroy Comfort Objects,” YouTube, January 26, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9VaO2yXWxg; The Aspie World, “Aspergers Object Obsession ׀ The Aspie World,” YouTube, January 12, 2014, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbrS8_qO6SU; “Aspergers Interests—Aspergers Syndrome and Interests ׀ The Aspie World,” YouTube, January 26, 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWypwGYWCSw; Connor Ward, “Autism and Object Attachment,” YouTube, July 11, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltNvIj3VY7o; “Autism and Obsessions/Special Interests,” YouTube, April 18, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4LSKzx0YSo.

49 Ratcliffe, Rhetorical Listening, 26 original emphasis.

50 Ibid., original emphases.

51 Ibid., 33.

52 Ibid., 26 original emphases.

53 Sharon Murphy Augustine, “Living in a Post-Coding World: Analysis as Assemblage,” Qualitative Inquiry 20, no. 6 (2014): 752.

54 Ratcliffe, Rhetorical Listening, 78.

55 George Herbert Mead, Mind, Self, and Society: From the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1934); Herbert Blumer, Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1969).

56 Mead, Mind, Self, and Society.

57 Mead, The Philosophy of the Act; Blumer, Symbolic Interactionism.

58 Mead, The Philosophy of the Act.

59 Blumer, Symbolic Interactionism, 2, 10.

60 Karen Barad, “Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter,” in Material Feminisms, ed. Stacy Alaimo and Susan Hekman (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008), 133.

61 Ibid.

62 Ibid., 136.

63 The Aspie World, “Aspergers Object Obsession.”

64 invisible i, “What Are Autism Special Interests?”

65 Khodaei, “How Obsessions Impact Individuals w/ Autism/Asperger’s Syndrome.”

66 Khodaei, “Overcoming Star Wars.”

67 Khodaei, “How Obsessions Impact Individuals w/ Autism/Asperger’s Syndrome.”

68 Ward, “Autism and Object Attachment.”

69 streamofawareness, “Autism.”

70 Khodaei, “Overcoming Star Wars.”

71 Shelley, “Yes I Sleep with Stuffed Animals.”

72 For example, see Walid A. Afifi and Masaki Matsunaga, “Uncertainty Management Theories,” in Engaging Theories in Interpersonal Communication: Multiple Perspectives, ed. Leslie A. Baxter and Dawn O. Braithwaite (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2008), 117–31; Austin S. Babrow and Katie M. Striley, “Problematic Integration Theory and Uncertainty Management Theory: Learning to Hear and Speak to Different Forms of Uncertainty,” in Engaging Theories of Interpersonal Communication: Multiple Perspectives, 2nd ed., ed. Dawn O. Braithwaite and Paul Schrodt (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2015), 103–13; Charles R. Berger and Richard J. Calabrese, “Some Explorations in Initial Interaction and Beyond: Toward a Developmental Theory of Interpersonal Communication,” Human Communication Research 1, no. 2 (1975): 99–112; Dale E. Brashers, “Communication and Uncertainty Management,” Journal of Communication 51, no. 3 (2001): 477–97; Leanne K. Knobloch, “Uncertainty Reduction Theory,” in Engaging Theories in Interpersonal Communication: Multiple Perspectives, ed. Leslie A. Baxter and Dawn O. Braithwaite (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2008), 133–43.

73 Leslie A. Baxter and Dawn O. Braithwaite, “Reclaiming Uncertainty: The Formation of New Meanings,” in Uncertainty, Information Management, and Disclosure Decisions: Theories and Applications, ed. Tamara D. Afifi and Walid A. Afifi (London: Routledge, 2009), 26–44.

74 Ward, “Autism and Obsessions.”

75 invisible i, “What Are Autism Special Interests?”

76 Günter Radden and Zoltán Kövecses, “Towards a Theory of Metonymy,” in Metonymy in Language and Thought, ed. Klaus-Uwe Panther and Günter Radden (Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 1999), 19.

77 Charles Goehring, Valerie Renegar, and Laura Puhl, “‘Abusive Furniture’: Visual Metonymy and the Hungarian Stop Violence against Women Campaign,” Women’s Studies in Communication 40, no. 4 (2017): 444.

78 brokenharbour, “Asperger’s and Object Obsession.”

79 Huber, “Asperger’s and Attachment.”

80 brokenharbour, “Asperger’s and Object Obsession.”

81 streamofawareness, “Autism.”

82 Ward, “Autism and Object Attachment.”

83 Khodaei, “How Obsessions Impact Individuals w/ Autism/Asperger’s Syndrome.”

84 Khodaei, “Overcoming Star Wars.”

85 Baxter and Asbury, “Critical Approaches to Interpersonal Communication,” 198.

86 Paul A. Mongeau and Mary Lynn Miller Henningsen, “Stage Theories of Relationship Development,” in Engaging Theories in Interpersonal Communication: Multiple Perspectives, ed. Leslie A. Baxter and Dawn O. Braithwaite (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2008), 372.

87 Irwin Altman and Dalmas Arnold Taylor, Social Penetration: The Development of Interpersonal Relationships (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1973); Mongeau and Miller Henningsen, “Stages Theories of Relationship Development.”

88 L. Edna Rogers and Valentin Escudero, eds., “Theoretical Foundations,” in Relational Communication: An Interactional Perspective to the Study of Process and Form (Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2004), 3–22.

89 Mongeau and Miller Henningsen, “Stages Theories of Relationship Development,” 373.

90 Baxter and Asbury, “Critical Approaches to Interpersonal Communication,” 196.

91 Ibid., 197.

92 Ibid.

93 Karin Knorr Cetina, “Sociality with Objects: Social Relations in Postsocial Knowledge Societies,” Theory, Culture & Society 14, no. 4 (1997): 13.

94 Ibid., 2, 25.

95 The Aspie World, “Aspergers Interests.”

96 Melissa, “Aspergers Girl.”

97 brokenharbour, “Asperger’s and Object Obsession.”

98 adultswithautism, “Turning Special Interests into a Career.”

99 For example, Melissa, “Aspergers Girl.”

100 Ward, “Autism and Obsessions.”

101 misplacedmermaid, “The Gift of Being an Autistic Parent.”

102 Moore and Manning, “What Counts as Critical Interpersonal and Family Communication Research?”