Autism’s Configurations

The book analyzes a selection of clinical, philosophical, and fictional works from the years 1943-1980 and thereby articulates a new method of analyzing metaphors as configurations, making the argument that both the migrations and the longevity of neuropolitical metaphors rely on how they configure with other figuralized phenomena. In the case of autism, its migrations between disciplines take place via the twin metaphors of mechanicity and withdrawal. These two resonate with specific cultural anxieties of a historical situation in such a way that autism as a metaphor becomes inherently entwined with a neuropolitical problem of selfhood in the late modernity of the Global North.