Constructing competence: autism, voice and the ‘disordered’ body

Abstract

Definitions of intelligence have traditionally been rooted in literacy competence. In this article, the authors examine two historical examples where societal prejudices and institutional forces worked to limit and regulate access to literacy. The first example illustrates how racism and denial of competence were so profoundly linked and established in 18th century America that author and poet Phyllis Wheatley was forced to go before a tribunal to demonstrate her faculties. The second example concerns Helen Keller. She too was, on more than one occasion, presumed a fraud and had her literacy interrogated. The authors then identify contemporary instances of societal monitoring of who may be literate, drawing especially on experiences of individuals classified as autistic. Based upon these examples, the authors examine the connection between perceptions of communicative competence and understandings of intelligence and mental retardation.

Notes

1. The first author graduated from Bowdoin College in 1967. The first section was written by the second author for a longer historical analysis of the Wheatley and Keller experiences. Subsequent sections are based in part on material that appeared in Biklen (2005). Portions of this paper were given in the form of an address given at The International Colloquium on Inclusive Education, McGill University, July 2004, and a subsequent address at Pennsylvania State University’s Rock Ethics Institute, November 2004.

2. Others with disabilities, in recent autobiographical narratives, have recalled their own emergence into literacy, e.g. the Irish authors Christopher Nolan (1987) and Christy Brown (1955, 1970) and the Australian disability rights activist Anne McDonald (Crossley & McDonald, 1980; Crossley, 1997) as equally explosive.

3. Controversy has swirled around the method of facilitated communication because it has been shown that a facilitator’s physical touch of the typist’s hand or arm could influence the person’s pointing, and because in a number of studies failed to validate authorship (Bebko et al., 1996; Bomba et al., 1996; Cabay, 1994; Crews et al., 1995; Eberlin et al., 1993; Klewe, 1993; Montee et al., 1995; Moore et al., 1993; Regal et al., 1994; Shane & Kearns, 1994; Smith & Belcher, 1993; Szempruch & Jacobson, 1993; Wheeler et al., 1993).

4. These studies use a range of test situations as well as linguistic analysis and documentation of physical, independent‐of‐facilitator typing to confirmed authorship (Broderick & Kasa‐Hendrickson, 2001; Calculator & Singer, 1992; Cardinal et al., 1996; Emerson et al., 2001; Janzen‐Wilde et al., 1995; Niemi & Karna‐Lin, 2002; Rubin et al., 2001; Sheehan & Matuozzi, 1996; Tuzzi et al., 2004; Weiss et al., 1996; Zanobini & Scopesi, 2001). The studies by Cardinal et al. (1996), Sheehan & Matuozzi (1996) and Weiss et al. (1996) all involved message passing experiments, but unlike many of the assessments in which individuals failed to demonstrate authorship, these included extensive testing sessions, with the possible effect of desensitizing the subjects to test anxiety. The non‐experimental studies noted above in which individuals successfully demonstrated authorship involved unobtrusive assessments, such as linguistic analysis, statistical analysis of word selection and independent typing after a period of facilitated typing.

5. The American Psychological Association, for example, passed a resolution that ‘adopts the position that facilitated communication is a controversial and unproved communicative procedure with no scientifically demonstrated support for its efficacy’. (American Psychological Association, adopted in council, August 14, Los Angeles, CA, p. 1).

6. The term ‘mental retardation’ is still used widely in the USA, while other jurisdictions have long since abandoned it in favour of ‘intellectual disability’ (Australia) and ‘learning difficulties’ or ‘learning disabilities’ (UK). It is used here because the term is the label that was applied to Rubin by educational authorities. The term ‘mental retardation’, like ‘intellectual disability’, is, of course, socially constructed, and its meaning has often shifted over the years. Colleagues in the UK tell us that the terms ‘learning disabilities’ and ‘learning difficulties’ are still routinely debated and are constantly shifting in meaning.

7. The second author was one of his teachers in an inclusive preschool.

8. We do not want to imply that children who do not seem to flourish are somehow the victims of poor or inadequate mothering. After all, fathers can also play important roles in child‐rearing as can schools and others social settings. We mean only to draw attention to the very gendered nature of current societal practices with regard to disability. Others have written about the gendered quality of this work and the fact that accomplishing it depends on a measure of middle‐class privilege as well as a willingness to resist dominant professional discourses of disability that are so often pessimistic (Harris, 2003; Morris, 1991; Traustadottir, 1991a, b); the role of parents, and particularly of mothers, comes up in many of the autobiographies of people with so‐called high‐functioning autism and so it is not surprising that it arises in the context of those who had been defined as ‘low functioning’. At the same time, there are examples in the literature of individuals who have found other people and opportunities for support (e.g. Williams, 1989, 1994).