“Nothing about us, without us”? The body in the construction of people with autism as social and political subjects

Abstract

The approval of Brazilian federal law 12.764, which recognizes people with autism as persons with a disability for all legal purposes, also points to the alliance between parents of autistic people and the larger political movement of people with disabilities. However, autism and severe intellectual disabilities pose great challenges to this model of activism. This article discusses the construction of autistic people as political and social subjects, based on observations of the different forms of interaction between people with autism and parents/ caregivers, with special attention to the uses of the body. Examining two paradigmatic cases, observed during fieldwork, I argue that the different relational dynamics established between parents/caregivers and autistic people index different strategies of activism and of construction of the autistic subject.