In Glen Finland’s memoir Next Stop, a mother confronts the decades-old American parenting ritual of helping a child to obtain their first job. Finland’s experience with her first two sons proved relatively typical; the same cannot be said for her third son, who was diagnosed at a young age as being on the ASD spectrum. David Finland’s challenges in obtaining employment are very different from those of his older brothers, as are the expectations placed on him within the larger cultural conversation he’s a part of.
The rise of the disabilities studies movement in the 1980’s coincided with a massive surge in literature concerning autism. Memoirs produced by writers confronting autism demonstrate complications with cultural expectations attached to adulthood, specifically those regarding self-sufficiency normally associated with obtaining employment.
This ethos is called into question within the disabilities studies movement. The presence of disabled (or differently abled) individuals in a society clouds cultural expectations, begging questions to be asked regarding how independent an autistic individual can be expected to be and in which ways a person with autism can or should contribute to the fulfillment of their own needs.
Capitalism privileges the neurotypical mind, and every child with autism faces an adult life affected by the condition. My research examines the attitudes and ideologies surrounding the manner in which autistic individuals achieve various degrees of self-sufficiency through entering the workforce, presenting the argument that malleable social environments are capable of structuring and supporting the “pushing back” of limits imposed by autism, fostering the cultivation of a more self-sufficient individual

Richter, Jacob D

English

The College at Brockport, State University of New York: Digital Commons @Brockport

Jacob Danial Richter 
15 February 2016 
SEGue Conference Paper 
 
 
Justifying Existence: Positioning Autism in a World of Capitalist Expectation 
 
It is a tense moment.  Carrie Brawshaw, the lead character on HBO’s television 
series Sex and the City, is telling a friend about a new man she’s been seeing.  All is 
running smoothly until Carrie, played by Sarah Jessica Parker, casually mentions one 
particular detail of her new beau’s life: he still lives with his parents.   “So not sexy, 
honey,” the friend exclaims.  “Dump him immediately—here, use my cellphone.” 1 
A strong cultural expectation is made overwhelmingly apparent in this brief 
exchange: individuals are, generally speaking, expected to achieve a certain level of self-
sufficiency in their lifetime.  In today’s post-industrial capitalist landscape, every 
individual is tasked in multiple arenas with contributing to the overall functioning and 
cohesion of the whole as well as providing for their own individual needs.  For an 
individual to fail to achieve this self-sufficiency is deemed unsatisfactory—and even 
encroaches on the value the culture places on that person’s worth as a human being.   
This cultural ethos is called into question by the rise of the disabilities studies 
movement, particularly within the huge surge of literature concerning autism produced in 
recent years.  The presence of disabled (or differently abled) individuals in a society 
clouds cultural expectations, begging questions to be asked regarding how independent an 
autistic individual can be expected to be and in which ways a person with autism can or 
should contribute to the fulfillment of their own needs. Complicating these matters is the 
                                                 
1 Sex and the City.  “Hot Child in the City.” (New York: HBO. September 24th, 2000). 
 
 2 
huge heterogeneity of autism’s physical manifestations and symptoms coupled with the 
great multitude of possible hurdles often needing to be overcome.  While much of an 
autistic individual’s ability to integrate into the demands of the modern workforce is 
determined by the degree in which their behavior affects their competency to manage 
assigned tasks, much of this behavior is shaped by the environment the individual is 
surrounded by, such as the parents, teachers, advocacy organizations and institutions in 
which the individual is hired to work in.  Capitalism privileges the neurotypical mind, 
and every autistic child faces an adult life affected by autism.  This paper examines the 
attitudes and ideologies surrounding the manner in which autistic individuals achieve 
various degrees of self-sufficiency through entering the workforce, arguing that malleable 
social environments are capable of structuring and supporting the “pushing back” of 
limits imposed by autism, fostering the cultivation of a more self-sufficient individual., a 
recurring telos in the autism narrative genre. 
 
The history of disability is, at its root, a history of difference. Dominant 
throughout the history of disability study has been a medical deficit model described by 
Davidson and Orsini as locating disability “in the individual” and supporting “efforts to 
cure” disabled persons to help them “overcome difficulties thought to originate from their 
own problematic embodiment.”2  Alternatively, a newer socially-based model has 
emerged in recent years formulated on a basis of viewing disability “as a product of 
people’s interactions with disabling and unsupportive environments,” where “rather than 
attempting to fix individuals,” advocates desire “to accommodate the diverse needs of 
                                                 
2 Davidson, Joyce and Michael Orsini.  Worlds of Autism: Across the Spectrum of 
Neurological Difference.  (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013).   
 3 
disabled people in society through improvements to aspects of their social and material 
environments.”3  Roy Richard Grinkler contends that autism “does not exist outside of 
culture,” with an infinitely complex spectrum of physical and cognitive possibilities 
grouped together under a single umbrella term fundamentally incapable of representing 
everything it claims to describe.4  These progressive ideas are supported in the outpouring 
of memoirs describing experiences with autism written in recent decades, nearly all of 
which report some level of progress based on deliberate changes to the social climate of 
their environment.  Principally a reaction and accommodation to shifting levels of 
understanding of the physical symptoms affecting an autistic person’s interaction with the 
world, these environmental tweaks vary on a case-by-case system as there are generally 
understood to be no demonstrable core deficits of the disorder; instead, social models 
argue that objective data on autism “homogenize the diversity of autistic experience” and 
tend to “gloss over the situated knowledge of those most intimately affected by autism: 
autistic people themselves.”5 6 
 
The family of Owen Suskind face an array of difficult decisions as Owen grows 
into adulthood, a story detailed in the caregiver memoir Life, Animated.  As a child, 
Owen began to stray outside his interior world only when others engaged his passion for 
Disney films and other animated coming of age tales, as is common among autistic 
                                                 
3 Ibid. 
4 Grinker, Roy Richard. Unstrange Minds: Remapping the World of Autism. (New York: 
Basic Books, 2007). 
5 Schreibman, Laura Ellen. The Science and Fiction of Autism. (Cambridge: Harvard 
University Press, 2005). 
6 Davidson, Joyce and Michael Orsini.  Worlds of Autism: Across the Spectrum of 
Neurological Difference.  (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013). 
 4 
individuals.  This technique worked successfully for a time in an effort to break Owen out 
of his shell, but as he grows older his father confronts anxieties over Owen’s capability of 
functioning independently as an adult.  Recognizing Owen’s general inability to 
communicate to others outside of through Disney references and metaphors, he finds 
himself encouraging Owen to mention specific points of mutual reference, such as the 
obvious parallels between The Lion King and Hamlet in an effort to help Owen connect 
with what “pretty much everyone in America north of early childhood is supposed to 
know.”7  This sentiment is echoed throughout the life-writing surrounding autism—Dawn 
Eddings Prince asserts part of her experience to be defined by an inability to cultivate 
even brief personal relationships easily with strangers because “if you couldn’t speak the 
lingua franca of the normal, then you had to be stupid and therefore disposable.”8  Owen 
is relatively high functioning—the communicative gap between him and the neurotypical 
world has little to do with breakdowns in language or non-verbal standards not being met, 
but rather functions to illustrate the differing value system placed on what are often 
considered narrow but extremely comprehensive appreciations of things generally 
considered useless by the neurotypical majority (things deemed unprofitable).  Owen and 
his family seek a life path outside of living in his parents’ basement; they turn over 
various college and college-like programs to find a bridge between worlds of autism and 
the demands of employment, all of which turn out to either be too expensive or are only 
facades for institutionalization.       
                                                 
7 Suskind, Ron.  “Life, Animated.”  (New York: Kingswell, 2014), 122. 
8 Dawn Eddings Prince.  “All the Things I Have Ever Been: Autoethnographic Reflections 
on Academic Writing and Autism.”  Worlds of Autism, ed. Davidson, Joyce and Michael 
Orsini. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013), 321. 
 5 
Owen’s path to self-sufficiency can be termed a vocational approach to post-
adolescent life.  Following his interests, however narrow, Owen and his family are able to 
foster the development of a life that allows Owen to live as independently as possible.  
Though the fields suitable for these narrow interests (animation and film production) are 
highly competitive and there seems to be no room for those who cannot “keep up,” 
Owen’s parents, the primary agents constituting his environment, never allow him to be 
discouraged from his dream of bringing back hand-drawn animation, and this positivity 
and support are invaluable resources for Owen’s success with his part-time job at a 
grocery store.  This motivational factor, whether accomplished in the end or forever 
remaining an elusive goal to be reached for and worked toward, provides Owen the 
means to go out of his way to improve his life and allow others to assist him.  Suskind 
anxiously notes that, when it comes to managing his life, at some point “Owen will have 
to do it on his own.”9  His developing social skills will need to translate to those who 
know little about him and are not “experts in directing his path or helping him discover 
himself.”10  The family decides to use Disney films to help Owen create his future, just as 
they did when he was still a mostly nonverbal three year old.  The family trusts in the 
neuroplasticity of the human brain, its ability to find a way around what they term the 
“blockages of autism,” but more so they’re trusting in Owen and his seeming inability to 
give up on pushing the limits of his own self-sufficiency, step by step, as he makes his 
way to a small group home and eventually out into the world on his own.11   They set up 
a “clubhouse” for Owen and a few friends to spend time at learning skills that help them 
                                                 
9 Ibid, 241. 
10 Ibid. 
11 Ibid, 241. 
 6 
to be successful in the real world, where they spend time role-playing job interview 
scenes, cooking, learning about personal finances such as balancing a checkbook, even 
how to use public transportation.  In this supportive and patient environment, Owen 
makes great gains, eventually securing himself part-time employment at a grocery store 
and a spot in a college-like program that attempts to help in the maturation of individuals 
on the ASD spectrum.     
Assimilating continually-developing autistic adults to the intricate social nuances 
of a particular community is a challenging process that must be undertaken gradually, 
step by step, on a basis determined by the individual’s particular needs, strengths and 
limits.   When Owen begins his part-time job, it is in two hour shifts twice a week which 
eventually stretch into four hours—which leave him utterly exhausted.  The Suskinds 
justify the job as it teaches first-hand skills of budgeting (Owen spends $2.50 of his $4 
gross pay at the video store), social interaction, punctuality (arriving to work on time as 
well as returning videos he alone is responsible for), even fostering a sense of 
community.  
The progress Owen achieves over the course of Life, Animated reaches a high 
point when he conquers a final remaining obstacle to his grocery job.  Like many others 
on the spectrum, Owen performs self-stimulation as a means of exerting control over his 
body and his incoming sensory perceptions, oftentimes in an effort to calm an anxious 
nervous system.  His attention span typically runs five minutes before he must perform 
some sort of stimming mechanism, usually something involving his hands.  Suskind 
expresses his concerns over Owen’s workplace behavior, anxious “that he would be off-
 7 
putting and incomprehensible to the uninitiated, the non-expert, the stranger,” and then be 
treated poorly by the anonymous faces of the crowd.12  
“Team Owen” devises a behavior modification program consisting of a “stim 
meter” which rates stimulatory behaviors on degree of disturbance they might cause, as 
well as a “stim replacement” therapy that exchanges high-disturbance stims such as 
Owen “jumping up and pacing” with a stim of a lower disturbance level, such as 
clenching a fist.13  The idea is to normalize Owen—to make him blend in with the crowd, 
to be an ordinary cashier.  Of particular contention within the popular ASD community, 
specifically the highly-opinionated turf of online forums and web collectives, is the 
seeming need for the eradication of prominent autistic characteristics if an individual is to 
be accepted by society in a public role.  Suskind confesses his recurring anxiety:  
I can’t help but think of Owen inside the apron.  What of him? As a young adult, 
he’s entering an ever more exacting, logical, mathematical world, that’s 
discounted effort, alone, in favor of analytical abilities he’ll never summon.  
Those who can will be the victors in his lifetime.  He’ll bump into plenty of them, 
I’m sure, as he grows.  He doesn’t register in their meritocracy.  A nonperson.  
That means he should be happy and grateful to wear that uniform for the rest of 
his life.14 
  
Public arenas such as grocery stores demand a standard of behavior to be met by 
both customers and employees, a code of conduct enforced by both groups of the shared 
space; in the same vein as how a crying toddler might elicit stares from passerbys in the 
checkout line, a clearly-stimming grocery employee runs the strong risk of drawing 
negative, potentially harmful attention to himself and to the company employing him.  To 
a parent or friend of an autistic individual, this is of little concern.  What Suskind worries 
                                                 
12 Ibid, 288. 
13 Ibid, 289.  
14 Ibid, 309. 
 8 
is that, in many instances, it is unprofitable to employ an autistic employee, even before 
taking on issues of focus, physical competency, ability to pick up on social cues, ability 
to answer and respond properly to questions, even the ability to improvise without direct 
guidance, as a typical employee will be expected to do at a certain point.  A profit-driven 
system, where the bottom line means everything—both for companies and for 
individuals—leaves little room for those incapable of “competing.”  In so many 
instances, the autistic individual is pushed out because their cognitive behavior patterns 
do not fit with the conventional, cookie-cutter forms demanded by 21st century business 
models, which demand social and behavioral performances individuals such as Owen 
may be unable to fit seamlessly in to.    
 Suskind’s painfully honest observation that many in the cold, profit-centric world 
view his son as a “non-person” confirms Owen’s status as an othered being, an individual 
marked as non-conformative to the values deemed profitable to the ruling neurotypical 
marketplace, where existence itself comes packaged with rules pre-fitted to exclude the 
unusual from the conventional normative workplace. Sanctioned, authorized behaviors 
are created in a business environment for a specific purpose: profit.  The constitution of 
personhood has become so entwined with the ability to further the economic functioning 
of a society that we often unable to see outside of it, the non-worker becoming a non-
person.  Business efficiency has become a necessary ingredient to personhood.  The 
autistic non-person is rendered a non-human, worthy of pity, compassion, with 
celebration of neurodiversity often reserved only for circus-like savant media sensations 
that come and pass with much fanfare and little lasting impact. 
 9 
Connected inseparably to capitalist systems are ideologies affecting human life 
based upon market demand, competition, wage labor and private ownership.  Attached to 
these ideas is a culture-wide linking of productivity with personhood, of economic 
fertility with identity.  Mark Osteen retorts that “our society’s ideology of bourgeois 
individualism and personal productivity does not know what to do with those who cannot 
compete or produce.”15 
The constitution of personhood has become so entwined with the ability to further 
the economic functioning of the collective capitalist society that we are often unable to 
see the human being outside of it.  As Carrie Bradshaw’s Sex and the City dilemma aptly 
points out, the issue of self-sufficiency is in no way unique to the disability community. 
The autistic individual’s personhood in society directly correlates with the demands of 
self-sufficiency imposed by a culture all-too-often driven by motives of profit.  The 
neurotypical world would do well to remember that while differences and profit may 
speak, comradeship and tolerance speak louder.     
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
                                                 
15 Osteen, Mark.  Introduction to Autism and Representation.  (New York: Routledge, 
2008). 
 10 
Works Cited 
 
Sex and the City.  “Hot Child in the City.” (New York: HBO. September 24th, 2000). 
 
Davidson, Joyce and Michael Orsini.  Worlds of Autism: Across the Spectrum of 
Neurological Difference.  (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013). 
 
Grinker, Roy Richard. Unstrange Minds: Remapping the World of Autism. (New York: 
Basic Books, 2007). 
 
Schreibman, Laura Ellen. The Science and Fiction of Autism. (Cambridge: Harvard 
University Press, 2005). 
 
Suskind, Ron.  “Life, Animated.”  (New York: Kingswell, 2014), 122. 
 
Dawn Eddings Prince.  “All the Things I Have Ever Been: Autoethnographic Reflections 
on Academic Writing and Autism.”  Worlds of Autism, ed. Davidson, Joyce and Michael 
Orsini. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013), 321. 
 
Osteen, Mark.  Introduction to Autism and Representation.  (New York: Routledge, 
2008). 


Justifying Existence: Positioning Autism in a World of Capitalist Expectation

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