'Thinking with Sticks': Autistic Life Narratives and their Material Components

This article analyses two videos by nonspeaking autistic self-advocates, In My Language (2007) by Mel Baggs and S/Pace by Adam Wolfond and Estée Klar (2019), to underscore the more-than-human manifestations of narrative. Showcasing embodied interactions with ‘inanimate’ things and paying attention to the physical properties of artistic creation, the videos encourage a dynamic and multifaceted approach to narrative, challenging conventional notions of text as static ‘words on a page.’ Posthumanism and new materialism, regarding existence as inherently relational, provide a pertinent framework for analysing the works outside cognitivist and medical frameworks, which pathologize dependence and privilege verbal expression. Considering how posthumanist and new materialist theory has challenged medical and scientific authority, S/Pace and In My Language are placed in dialogue with these developments. With special attention to formal techniques and structural qualities, their potential to enrich posthumanist criticism, diversify narratological theory, and dissociate autism from the pathology paradigm is considered.