Paul Heilker and Jason King. "The Rhetorics of Online Autism Advocacy." Rhetorics and Technologies. Ed. Stuart Selber. U of South Carolina P, 2010. Print. 113-133.
I’d like to speak exactly to the above article, which I have chosen because we divided articles in part two of Rhetorics and Technologies for this week. Heilker and King made the easily-understood point that people affected by autism, who exhibit a wide range of symptoms which might be broadly classed as communicative anomalies, might be taught to function better within society if they were methodically trained in rhetorical listening practices. Using an analogy from Ratcliffe, the authors of “The Rhetoris of Online Autism Advocacy” suggest that educators invert the term “understanding,” which comes pre-loaded with pathos, to “standing under,” with the connotation that social communication presides over all of us, and we must learn to look up and function within it.
King and Heilker outline the tenets of rhetorical listening with three points:
First, that “rhetorical listening is a trope for invention,” as opposed to just the apprehension of written, spoken, or visual language.
Second, that rhetorical listening is “a stance of openness,” not just a practice.
Third, that rhetorical listening can itself affect change, more so than understand changes (125-6).
Reading the section on Emily Perl Kingsley’s “Welcome to Holland,” regarding Down’s Syndrome, and Rzucidlo’s “Welcome to Beirut,” referring to autism, I was reminded of the situation of a former mentor, SB, of Murray State University. He published a non-fiction piece in the New Madrid journal about his feelings upon finding that his daughter, who came along late in SB’s life, was born with Down’s. The piece is vivid, and it catalogs his emotions standing with his baby carriage on a high bridge over Kenlake Marina in The Land Between the Lakes national recreation area. He seriously considered pushing his daughter over the bridge into the water. I admired his honesty, and I wondered often if his daughter would admire it as much.
My best friend was diagnosed early with autism. His mother became a nurse and stayed home to nurture him into social function. My buddy BW could not talk until he was six, but decades later, he has a BA, works two jobs, admires Victorian and Elizabethan literature, and is of all things a professional actor.
These authors principally wish to convey that rhetorical listening is a practice which involves logos more than pathos, even asserting that positive attention for individuals with autism, which often appears in the media with celebrity figureheads and pathetic stories, have the opposite effect than that desired by the Aspies for Freedom group desires—by eliciting emotional responses for individuals, public attention provides an outlet for feelings rather than inducing listeners to build tension and apprehension that those afflicted with Aspberger’s or autism suffer today—the pressure for a cure (119). Heilker and King make the case, particularly at the end of the article, that autism has progressed and proliferated into a situation of ethos, where a substantial minority of the world population desires ethical treatment.
Their most salient point, in my estimation, asserts that autistics comprise an entire culture, not just a group of individuals. By soliciting emotional responses and requesting sympathy for individual sufferers, we make a series of assumptions:
/- Autism is a pitiable disease, the symptoms of which cause the autistic to suffer in society.
/- Some exceptional subjects of autism develop uncanny mental abilities, aligning them with idiot savants.
/- To be integrated with society, the autistic should be treated as individuals and judged by social criteria.
These authors instead would advocate considering the autistic as a notable contingency of society. They believe that autistics can be addressed as a legitimate segment of the population, rather than as a herd of individuals to be separated, cajoled, and treated.
As a related non-sequitur, I offer a tutorial that partly destroyed my week.
How to (or not to) install a water heater.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFwj0bas6Bk
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