ABSTRACT
This chapter draws upon insights from cognitive neuroscience, performance theory and practice, as well as our personal and professional experience of living and working with autistic people in order to better understand the characteristics of the autistic imagination. Autism is a prevalent theme in both literary and cognitive studies. Disability studies in the West have challenged the prevalent discourses on autism that stress deficits in need of remediation or cure, emerging from the medical model that underpins diagnosis. Disability studies in the West have challenged the prevalent discourses on autism that stress deficits in need of remediation or cure, emerging from the medical model that underpins diagnosis. Imagining Autism was developed at a time of change in autism awareness and diagnosis, with the autistic community increasingly giving voice, stressing the importance of community-based participatory research models, advocating research that has relevance to the lived experience of autistic children.
