“Somos Autistas”: uma cartografia afetiva de enunciados de neurodivergentes no instagram

Abstract

This thesis investigates the enunciations of neurodivergent subjects on Instagram. We seek to understand how the demands, agencies and discourses which are enunciated by autistic people in their communication arrangements on the digital social networking platform mobilize their vulnerabilities and conditions for recognizing their autonomy. The research favors the analysis of posts in an affective way, dedicated to listen to the voices of autistic subjects and present their manifestos. The discussions are mobilized by their statements and speeches and the reflections that result from them are close to the analysis operator axes: self-definition, normative judgment schemes, vulnerabilities and relational autonomy. A cartographic intuition guides the methodological construction that is attentive to the rhizomatic connections (Deleuze and Guattari, 1995), to the investigative sensibilities of thinking in constellations (Walter Benjamin, 2009) and by a sensitive deed of affections marked by the subjectivity resulting from the exploration of the thresholds and the relationship with otherness. The empirical object is shaped by 12 profiles of autistic subjects on Instagram, with an average of 28 years old, present in 10 different brazilian states, in the 5 regions of the territory and with 8 different kinds of occupations. The time frame gathers data that were collected over 21 months, in the period between June 2020 and February 2022, within 574 publications related to the theme of autism. From the material collected and organized into thematic constellations, 95 posts set the analysis selection. The theoretical corpus consists of notions of the neurodiversity movement (Singer, 2017; Silberman, 2015; Bailin, 2019; Abreu, 2021, 2022), disability studies (Campbell, 2001, 2009; Mello, 2016; Dias, 2013; Diniz, 2003, 2007, 2010), discourse theories, enunciative modalities, issues of technique and the care of the self (Foucault, 1997, 2008, 2014), and biopotency (Pelbart, 2008). It is also formed by the notions of affection and autobiographical narratives (Marques, Martino and Pessoa, 2022), interaction, communication devices and arrangements (Braga, 2012, 2020), stigma (Goffman, 1963, 1975), vulnerability, recognition and relational autonomy (Butler, 2011, 2015; Ferrarese, 2016; Laugier, 2005, 2016; Marques, 2018). In this scenario are revelead neurodivergent subjects who, by enunciating their demands, agencies and dispositional arrangements shared in a network, mobilize their vulnerabilities. With the transforming potential of their speeches, through the reports of their lives and everyday experiences, they pursue to modify their own structure of vulnerability, define themselves, alter frameworks and normative judgment schemes in order to be seen and recognized as autonomy beings. Therefore, they engage their meaning reorganization tactics and, in their singularities, make connections and arrangements. Thereupon, in a network, in this collective, they define: “we are autistic”.