der disability discourse, which might be more widely accepted if more research is done into the history of autism.
Collecting Autism History — Choices and Cautions:
The history of autism does not need to be limited to autistic people. As Geoffrey Reaume points out in his paper, Disability History in Canada: Present Work In the Field and Future Prospects, we need more research into the history of all disabilities including sensory disabilities, intellectual disabilities, physical disabilities, disability and eugenics, disability history as it intersects with race and immigration (and gender I would add), mad-people’s history, and activist histories. He does not, however, cite autism history, specifically. As I mentioned, because autism is a very recent diagnosis (1993), oral histories and autistic memoir have coincided with a recent disability rights movement of the 1960’s. These have contributed to a rapidly burgeoning Autism Rights Movement. We understand autism, therefore, in very modern terms and autism is still largely missing among a more vast body of disability history.
“In order to have a fuller sense of history, including where disabled people lead lives that are as mundane and full of contradictions as that of most people who are not disabled, a wide variety of sources need to be preserved and a wide variety of histories need to be told.” Reaume cautions us that the bulk of modern history, as it were, is locked up in our computers. One day, he argues, those computers will break down. The internet will dump our information; our emails are not printed on paper to be saved. Such correspondences have contributed to our understanding of how the disabled were treated and regarded by the medical profession. They also have illuminated the private lives and struggles of the disabled, as two examples.
This brings me to the thought of how much of our autism history, and the history of the Autism Rights Movement exploded online. Due to the very nature of computing and ease of use to communicate in this format for many autistic people, we also run the risk of losing it. It was one of the reasons I curated the exhibition during the event The Joy of Autism: Redefining Ability and Quality of Life in 2007. This comprised a series of events, lectures and visual exhibits.
Organizing TAAP and The Events:
As curator, (note, a non-autistic person) I attempted to capture the YouTube videos, the blogs by autistic people and autistic allies, the political debates and the resistance of autistic people to others ascribing an identity to them that was based in fascination and fear. Accounts had been recorded online as personal stories about behavioural treatment, schools, and institutionalization, parent abuse, infanticide, as well as statements about autistic perspective and personal strengths went unrecognized by the medical research community and the media. These usually took an online blog-form, although autistic people began socializing in online chat rooms and social games before then. Much of this was aimed at refuting popular mythologies that were proliferating about autism and people with autism as unaware and “not even in the room,” to describe a vacuous, unintelligent nature of autistic people.
We (interested volunteers and autistic people) exhibited important new websites and their content in a more traditional gallery-exhibition format. The exhibit was mixed with video, artwork, published work executed by autistic people on large signage, some printed on fibre glass as floating; thoughts, by autistic people, about how they had been treated and regarded. Different aspects were located in different gallery rooms at The Lonsdale Gallery in Toronto. Videos produced by autistic people and activists played on a loop so that the audience could watch as well as hear the voices of autistic people, some of them who used text-to-speech devices. YouTube was new at the time where people uploaded their videos. The generous size of the gallery befitted the echo of the videos — an autistic echo as the videos kept playing while the audience re