For the autism rights activist Jim Sinclair (1999), “person with autism” suggests that autism “is something bad—so bad that it isn’t even consistent with being a person.” Dawson thinks that using that expression would be as bizarre as using “person with femaleness” to designate a woman (quoted in Harmon 2004c). Attitudes toward cure and therapies are consistent with these various positions.
Inspired by the homonymous book by Fernando Vidal and Francisco Ortega, this timespace presents the authors' genealogy of the cerebral subject and the influence of the neurological discourse in human sciences, mental health and culture.