In this paper I bring the vocabulary of disability studies in conversation with queer philosophical reflection to re-read the violent “enabling” educational practices that are applied unto autistic...Show moreIn this paper I bring the vocabulary of disability studies in conversation with queer philosophical reflection to re-read the violent “enabling” educational practices that are applied unto autistic subjects. By using the term violence I am not only referring to the usage of physical force, but mainly to the simplification and realisation of bodies to a core pre-supposed essence. In doing so I am in conversation with queer studies (Kafer, Federici) and critical race theory (Hall, Spivak). Yet, I will expand their thinking by reading the diagnosis of autism within an educational context exists as an interpretation of epistemic dis-ability. The term dis-ability highlighting the fact that a diagnosis is an interventions into a momentary state of disability with the explicit expectations that it should be overcome through the enabling intervention of education. I will further demonstrate that this demarcation of dis-ability is applied beyond the obvious cases of “disabled” bodies and can be traced to the epistemically violent treatment of othered bodies. Thus, the reading of autism functions as a litmus-test that reveals the underlying framing of normalising education to be the rhetoric of caring, which functions as a justification for the employment of violent epistemic stereotyping as a tool to make disabled bodies abled. The target this work can thus claim to have is not violent educational practices in themselves, but the attempt to fixate a simplifying meaning through claims to nature, common sense and othering practices. This is because they end the types of discourse we can have, reading every bit of noise and silence as a justification of itself. Leaving us unable to ask if the dream of a mature society justifies the violent means it attempts to realise itself through.Show less
