While parents fight to obtain governmental support or make health insurance companies pay for the therapy, which is extremely expensive, neurodiversity advocates maintain that autism is not an illness and that attempts to cure it violate autistic rights (Baker 2011; Dawson 2004; Orsini 2009, 2012). The latter position may provide reasons for refusing to subsidize treatments, but the most adamant partisans of neurodiversity are willing to take the risk. For them, the search for therapies manifests denial and intolerance toward differences and enacts eugenic and genocidal policies; in 2004, some went as far as petitioning the United Nations for recognition as a “minority social group” that deserves protection against “discrimination” and “inhuman treatment” (Nelson 2004).
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.
