Book Review: Richard Shorten, The Ideology of Political Reactionaries

Maynard and Turowetz are clear that they don’t understand their work as critical in the sense of challenging the nature of autism. However, I think the book is quite critical in multiple respects. While they do not draw on neurodiversity scholars’ work, they are explicating the details of some of neurodiversity studies’ core ideas. They redirect the analytic gaze from the minds, brains, and genes of the individual to the mutual accomplishment of sense (or non-sense) between parties. They provide a method by which critical scholars can seek out the phenomena they discuss and understand it in its natural, in-the-moment unfolding. And probably most critical is their saying that, while an individual’s uncommon sense might be confusing or disturbing to neurotypicals, it is also an invitation to enter the autistic person’s world where the confusion and disturbed feelings can be resolved. This is linked to the recommendation that what is therapeutic for autistic children is not being trained to participate in a neurotypical world, but it is for neurotypical people to re-/produce the world as a ‘prosthetic environment’ (pp. 203–204) that can support the independent, active participation of autistic people in society.