I am presently finishing an essay provisionally entitled "Faking or
Policing Disability?:
Donna Williams and the Ethics of Authorship".
The essay examines the reception of Donna Williams's third book, "Like
Color to the Blind", especially in her native Australia. What happened was
that a national radio program caused a furore by questioning her
credentials as a person with a disability. The questions they posed were as
follows: Was she really autistic, as her books suggested? Or was she just
pretending? After all, she was highly intelligent, literate and able to
participate in complex social situations. And if she was not autistic, had
she not perpetrated a literary fraud on an unsuspecting, uncritically
admiring readership?
I look at this case as an exemplary instance of the policing of disability,
especially in relation to who may or may not be an author, and who may or
may not tell their own story (and if they do, what conventions of
autobiography are brought to bear). In the reception of "Like Color to the
Blind", Donna Williams's narrative was pushed to the background, and her
very identity and legitimacy as a person with disability was brought to the
fore -- with an interrogation at the bar of dominant biomedical models and
authorities. (Her ex-university lecturer, for instance, was prominent in
questioning her claim to be autistic on the grounds that she displayed a
high intelligence and proficiency in her final years at university.)
Williams's "case" was read in the light of a number of literary scandals in
Australia, especially the Demidenko case, in which Helen Darville, from
English parents, posed as a writer with Ukranian ancestry, a "multicultural
writer", examining Nazism in the Ukraine in World War II.
What I would like to ask of list members is to what extent this "scandal"
about Donna Williams was reproduced or occurred at all in other countries
than Australia. Is Donna Williams's claim to being a person with disability
still contested by autism experts, groups, or readers of her autobiography?
And by whom is she supported?
I would welcome any comments -- to me privately if you wish.
Gerard Goggin
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Gerard Goggin ([log in to unmask])
School of Humanities, Media and Cultural Studies
Southern Cross University
P.O. Box 157 Lismore NSW 2480
Ph: 02 6620 3608 Fax: 02 6622 1683
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