Being Autistic and Autistic Being: Trans and Gendered Analyses of Autistic Subjectivity and Ontology

Long histories of pathologisation have created narrow definitions of what it means to be autistic, thus limiting autistic people's ability to articulate their own being. This interdisciplinary project interrogates these histories and accounts for how autistic subjectivity, and consequent ontology, are constructed within

historical and contemporary clinical discourses of disability and neurology. I propose to use a unique theoretical framework informed by queer, trans, Black, and disabled critiques to examine these narratives and to demonstrate the mechanisms of power through which autistic individuals are subjected and made

ontological. I present the novel argument that autistic people construct new ways of being, and thus new ontologies, through art, performance, writing, and community building that resist subjectivising processes. I ask: what is the epistemological significance of understanding autistic ontology through models of Black and

trans subjectivities? This makes space for autistic existence beyond neurology; opens new pathways for autistic ontologies to be formed; and disentangles, without disconnecting, autism from its constructive origins.