Transnational Autistic Identities

Abstract

The historic lack of diversity in autism scholarship has affected the way we teach and learn about autistic identities and knowledge across disciplines and spaces. As more autistic authors fight for visibility and representation in social and academic platforms, there remains a dearth of scholarship regarding postcolonial and/or transnational autistic experiences. This is despite the rich discourse prevalent in online communities accessed by autistic users around the world. This paper explores the use of digital discourse analysis to disrupt the academic ghost authorship of autism, which often erases (or evades) intersecting issues of race, language, and nationality in the negotiation of autistic knowledge and identities. Scholars who study or collaborate with online communities can investigate the ways this knowledge is constructed across cultural and political borders, thereby holding space for underrepresented autistic perspectives.