698030

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EJT0010.1177/1354066117698030European Journal of International RelationsChristian

Article
EJIR
European Journal of
International Relations
Autism in International 2018, Vol. 24(2) 464­–488
© The Author(s) 2017
Relations: A critical assessment Reprints and permissions:
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of International Relations’ DOI: 10.1177/1354066117698030
https://doi.org/10.1177/1354066117698030
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autism metaphors

Stephen Michael Christian

University of Utah, USA

Abstract
In this article, I explain how International Relations scholarship relates to ableism. Ableism
is a sociopolitical system of narratives, institutions, and actions collectively reinforcing
an ideology that benefits persons deemed able-bodied, able-minded, and normal by
others, and devalues, limits, and discriminates against those deemed physically and/or
mentally disabled and abnormal. International Relations scholars have been quick to
utilize disability metaphors as rhetorical support for their arguments and analyses. This
article discusses how metaphors in general — and disability metaphors in particular —
get their meaning from various other discourses and narratives. International Relations
scholars, in the case of disability metaphors, often draw from discourses and narratives
that perpetuate ableism. I demonstrate how disability metaphors can be ableist by
researching how several International Relations foreign policy analysts and theorists have
applied autism metaphors. I argue that International Relations’ uses of autism metaphors
are ableist insomuch as they shape or reinforce understandings of autism that often
oversimplify, overgeneralize, or otherwise misrepresent autism and Autistic people in
ways that portray autism negatively. In the conclusion, I reflect on the importance of a
disability studies program in International Relations and the broad set of topics that such
a program should pursue.

Keywords
ableism, autism, disability, international relations, neurodiversity, rhetoric

Corresponding author:
Stephen Michael Christian, University of Utah, 332 S 1400 E, Salt Lake City, Utah 84112, USA.
Email: s.m.christian@utah.edu
Christian 465

Introduction
This article’s goal is to help readers understand the International Relations (IR) disci-
pline’s relationship with ableism. Ableism is a sociopolitical system of narratives, insti-
tutions, and actions collectively reinforcing an ideology that benefits persons deemed
able-bodied, able-minded, and normal by others, and devalues, limits, and discriminates
against those deemed physically and/or mentally disabled and abnormal. This article
explores how scholars use disability metaphors — often seemingly without self-
conscious reflection about the socially constructed meanings embedded in these meta-
phors — to make sense of international politics. Such use spans from how international
actors have been “crippled” by war, to how states suffer from various “pathologies” that
warp their perception of the international system, and to how arrogant world leaders are
“blind” to the complications of reality or “deaf” to naysayers’ warnings. With the preva-
lence of disability metaphors throughout IR, it is puzzling that there is not a larger disa-
bility studies program — scholarship that critically challenges widely held perceptions
and assumptions about disability in order to empower disabled peoples — for studying
these metaphors. Such a program could raise more self-awareness about IR scholars’
place in their societies and how the language they use can obscure the experiences and
realities of disabilities. Disability studies could uncover the misassumptions that IR
scholars make about international politics because of ableist narratives. Furthermore,
this article supports claims that IR scholars should pay attention to how the metaphors
they use shape how people perceive international politics. Problematic uses of metaphors
can have deleterious consequences, not only by perpetuating harmful ways of thinking
about others, but also by affecting how IR scholars think about the world. Metaphors
may be an inescapable part of language, but scholars should be aware of when their
metaphors reinforce, rather than subvert, inhibitions of critical thinking about interna-
tional affairs.
To demonstrate the importance of studying disability metaphors, I focus on IR schol-
ars’ widespread use of autism metaphors. A discourse that constructs autism pathologi-
cally has structured much popular knowledge about autism. Disability scholars, however,
criticize this discourse and argue for alternatives that are more accepting of Autistic
people. While there is a wealth of valuable and critical research on autism from disability
studies, there has not been any endeavor to analyze how autism is used as a narrative
device in IR literature. This article answers some simple but important questions: how
and why is autism represented in IR literature in the way that it is, and how might such
representations reinforce ableist narratives of Autistic people? What is perhaps the most
shocking aspect about autism metaphors is how several prominent IR scholars have used
autism as a narrative device to support their ideas without considering the scientifically
and politically contestable meanings of autism metaphors and the problematic conse-
quences of using them.1
I argue that IR’s autism metaphors are ableist because they shape or reinforce under-
standings of autism that often oversimplify, overgeneralize, or otherwise negatively mis-
represent autism and Autistic people. In researching the use of autism metaphors, two
patterns in the use of these metaphors emerged that support this argument. First, IR schol-
ars do frequently stereotype autism; this article focuses especially on the autism-as-disease
466 European Journal of International Relations 24(2)

and autism-as-aloneness metaphors. Scholars have also used other problematic associa-
tions with autism, such as violence and perpetual immaturity. Regardless of what the ste-
reotype is, Autistic people and autism experts alike have repeatedly asserted that these
stereotypes are outdated, contested, and misleading, when not simply wrong.
Second, IR scholars use autism metaphors to disparage either foreign policies or sup-
port their IR theories. Scholars use this rhetoric for legitimizing their arguments, and
such rhetoric succeeds when they connect ableist understandings of autism held by
readers with some foreign policy or IR theory. Scholars will sometimes incorporate
autism metaphors to improve their theories, while others use it to disparage a foreign
policy or alternative theory. This disparagement implies a scholar’s desire to rectify
such a foreign policy or theory, much like how doctors and research focus on autism to
find a treatment or cure. The autism metaphor perpetuates the idea that, rather than
being a difference on a larger neurological spectrum — often called “neurodiversity” by
Autistic self-advocates and disability scholars — autism is a disease that needs to be
stopped for the well-being of children, families, and societies. While observations and
criticisms of theories and policies may be warranted, associating them with autism rein-
forces prejudices rendering the condition as a tragedy. Not all IR scholars explicitly call
autism a disease in need of a cure or explicitly associate it with other stereotypes, but
the rhetorical effectiveness of autism metaphors presupposes these social constructs.
What this analysis demonstrates is that the IR discipline is largely unaware or apathetic
to the politics surrounding autism and how autism metaphors in the literature can rein-
force or resist hegemonic constructions of autism.
This article has two sections. The first section introduces disability studies, ableism,
and cultural representations of autism. This section discusses how rhetoric and disability
metaphors gain legitimacy and power through intertextuality. Likewise, this section dis-
cusses what disability scholars call narrative prosthesis — a narrative device symboli-
cally invoking disabilities, including autism, as commentary on what the author believes
is a problem. The second section demonstrates how IR’s autism metaphors are drawn
from and reinforce these ableist cultural representations. In the conclusion, I reflect on
the ethical and analytical importance of a radical re-imagining of how autism should be
represented in IR and the importance of a larger disability studies program in IR. The
conclusion reflects on the importance of metaphors and how a disability studies program
can engage various other areas of IR research, including constructivism and critical stud-
ies like feminist and post-colonial studies.

Metaphors, ableism, and cultural representations of autism

This section introduces an overview of disability studies in general and autism studies in
particular. First, this section elaborates on disability studies, ableism, and the ways in
which metaphors and rhetoric relate to disability. Second, this section summarizes the
literature on cultural representations and metaphors around autism. The two most widely
used stereotypes associated with autism (at least in the IR literature examined) are the
autism-as-disease and autism-as-aloneness metaphors, but other common depictions
include the autism-as-violence/criminality and autism-as-perpetual-childhood. Each of
these metaphors is challenged by presenting either counter-narratives or examples of
Christian 467

why such metaphors are problematic. This section is not meant to demonstrate that using
metaphors in general, or even specifically disability metaphors, is in itself bad. However,
this section elaborates on how using metaphors to describe international politics could
perpetuate oppressive views of others and arbitrarily constrain the empirical questions
and normative commitments that IR scholars can make.

Disability studies and disability metaphors

The central claim in disability studies is that understandings and realities of disability are
contingent on power relations, social constructions, and historical and political contin-
gencies that produce and reinforce ableism. Ableism, to draw from Simi Linton (1998),
is a system of oppression that discriminates against those identified as disabled. Ableist
ideas include thinking that disabled persons cannot participate solely because of their
disability (rather than because of the social institutions that disabled persons find them-
selves in) and that disabled people are collectively inferior to the non-disabled.
Several disability scholars like Joseph N. Straus (2013) argue that there are two gen-
eral ways of understanding disability. The prominent way is through a medicalized dis-
course. In this discourse, disability is first and foremost a pathology that exists within
individual bodies. People understand disability in this discourse primarily in pathologi-
cal and biological terms. Due to the emphasis on disability as a deficit, the solutions in
this discourse include curing, normalizing, or eliminating disabled bodies. The second
way to understand disability is that it is social and relational, not an inevitable truth of
any individual body. This does not mean that there are bodies that are not biologically
impaired. Several disability scholars often refer to this social-constructionist understand-
ing of disability as the “social model,” which they believe is a framework that disabled
persons can use to resist oppressive discourses. However, there are other disability
scholars (Owens, 2015) who believe that the social model undertheorizes embodied
experiences, problematically universalizes the narrative of oppression between medical
sciences and disabled bodies, ignores the productive (not just suppressive) aspects of
power, arbitrarily separates illness from impairment, and ignores how bodies themselves
contribute to practices of socialization. However, regardless of whether or how much a
disability scholar supports the social model of disability, disability scholars generally
challenge preconceived notions about disability that are primarily based on ableist dis-
courses and raise awareness, appreciation, and understanding of disabled peoples.
Disability scholars like James C. Wilson and Cynthia Lewiecki-Wilson (2001) pay
close attention to how language and rhetoric involving disability promotes and/or sub-
verts ableism. Language and rhetoric are not ethically or politically neutral, and they
are mechanisms of subjectivizing bodies into an epistemological framework. The lan-
guage surrounding disability is usually one of lack and powerlessness. Disability is
associated with an abnormality, a lack of capabilities, weakness, loss of agency, and
sometimes absence of legal personhood. This language is an expression of — and a
barrier to overcoming — an “ideology of ability” (Siebers, 2008: 159) that defines
what is and is not human based on able-bodiedness and able-mindedness. While
valuing those deemed able-bodied and able-minded, the ideology of ability has led to
justifying the institutionalization, objectification, killing, dehumanization, stigmatization,
468 European Journal of International Relations 24(2)

infantilization, marginalization, and silencing of those who others identify as disabled

throughout modern history.
Using disability metaphors can reinforce ableist preconceptions of disability, a topic
familiar to disability studies. Disability scholars studying metaphors draw from Susan
Sontag’s (1989) essays on how diseases are metaphorized, such as with the use of war
metaphors that evoke an overzealous, unrestrained action and consequently exacerbate
the ill’s anguish. Drawing from Aristotle, Sontag (1989: 93) defines metaphor as “giving
the thing a name that belongs to something else.” Paul Ricoeur (1977: 188) expands
Aristotle’s definition to include “any ‘shift from literal to figurative sense.’” Sontag
(1989: 93) states that the use of metaphors goes back to the earliest days of philosophy
and poetry and is an important “spawning ground” for even scientific forms of under-
standing today. As rhetorical tools, metaphors and other figures of speech can convince
an audience that one’s understanding of a phenomenon is the right one. Such figures of
speech are persuasive almost as much as they are pervasive. People often use metaphors,
as Emily F. Nye (2001: 230) explains, to make sense of complex scientific ideas around
diseases and disability. However, metaphors can stigmatize or dehumanize the ill or disa-
bled. Typically, such metaphors are disparaging: disability is often a rhetorical tool to
express criticism of some sort of social, political, or cultural situation. These metaphors
lend their power to writers and speakers because of what interpretivists and literary
scholars call “intertextuality” (Schwartz-Shea and Yanow, 2012: 86). According to Julia
Kristeva (1986: 37, emphasis in original), intertextuality is the idea that “any text is the
absorption and transformation of another … [P]oetic language is read as at least double.”
For example, if politicians describe how sanctions adversely affect a home country, they
may convince constituents by writing how it has “crippling” consequences. Crippling
gets its meaning from its relation to other words. The persuasiveness that this writing has
over audiences is gained, in part, through successfully likening economic sanctions to a
pre-existing discourse that stigmatizes “cripples.” However, connecting an argument
against sanctions with disability also reinforces this stigma, for “cripples” are now asso-
ciated with an unpopular and possibly harmful economic policy.
Likewise, people can use disability metaphors as a plot device that David T. Mitchell
and Sharon L. Snyder (2000) call a “narrative prosthesis.” A narrative prosthesis involves
symbolically using disability to raise awareness of social wrongs. An example of narra-
tive prosthesis would be the “cripple” Tiny Tim, a pitiful child who makes audiences
aware of the moral depravity of Ebenezer Scrooge and capitalism. Narrative prosthesis
constructs what is the “normality” (often signified by an able-bodied or able-minded
person) that a society should strive for or protect, but it does this in identifying abnor-
malities (in the form of disabilities). However, while this narration can direct audiences
toward focusing on a legitimate issue, there is often no acknowledgment of the social and
political situations of actual disabled people. Ironically, narrative prosthesis make disa-
bility visible through rhetoric while simultaneously rendering invisible the experiences
of disabled persons themselves.
Not only is this normal–abnormal dichotomy co-constructed in Western societies that
privilege normality, but even the notions of normal and abnormal are not universal.
According to Lennard J. Davis (1998), the concept of normal does not appear in Europe
until around the 19th century. Previously, societies understood bodies in terms of the
Christian 469

ideal and the grotesque. The ideal was associated with the gods and was unachievable by
non-divine mortals. Grotesqueness challenged and undermined the ideal. However, with
the development of statistics, societies began to think of human beings in relation to the
average and normal, making the ideal finally achievable. However, these aspirations
toward improving the average toward the ideal justified — and continue justifying vari-
ations of — eugenics and Social Darwinism. Disabled people have been subjected to
forced sterilization, institutionalization, medical objectification, and death because oth-
ers saw them as obstacles to improving society. Emblematized by the bell curve, modern
societies are constantly trying to find ways to improve averages. Experts see whoever
significantly deviates from the average and toward the undesirable side of the curve (e.g.
dwarves, the mentally disabled, and fat people) as detriments to the body politic.
Furthermore, even if the average “improves,” statistics will reproduce a new bell curve,
and statisticians can identify new degenerates.
Critiquing the normal–abnormal dichotomy does three important things for studying
disability metaphors. First, it clarifies exactly how disability metaphors often work: their
ability to criticize or dismiss something for its abnormality is contingent on modern
Western societies’ particularly ableist understanding of bodies. Second, it exposes the
violent implications of this dichotomy against disabled and other abnormal people.
Finally, it contextualizes this dichotomy, which opens up the possibility of society recon-
ceptualizing bodies and concepts in alternative ways that overcome the ableism associ-
ated with the normal–abnormal dichotomy. In other words, it means that scrutinizing, for
example, is not a frivolous activity, but an important intervention that contributes to
resisting, even overcoming, ableism.

Autism metaphors
For the rhetoric surrounding autism, metaphors are aplenty. These stereotypical autism
metaphors result in two distinct problems. First, as Murray (2008: 208) warns, there are
“very real dangers if the conception of autism as a metaphor floats completely free from
the actuality of the condition itself”; autism metaphors can misinform others about what
autism is and is not, or grossly simplify it, thus inhibiting understanding of Autistic peo-
ple’s lives. Autism is not a single, ubiquitously identical condition, but instead displays
a wide variety of behaviors and characteristics. Ableist rhetoric often obscures this het-
erogeneity and, even when acknowledged, is often understood by audiences as if all
Autistic people are the same. Second, using autism metaphors in disparaging or simplis-
tic terms can enforce a cultural hegemony that precludes accepting Autistic people.
People and behaviors that are “autistic” are presumably abnormal and consequently not
what people should want in a society, which draws upon and reinforces ableist beliefs
about autism. At its most extreme, autism metaphors bolster a political imagination that
has no interest in including Autistic people. However, even if society accommodates
Autistic people, ableist autism metaphors can limit a society’s capability to imagine
inclusion beyond normalization, that is, mitigating their autistic behaviors.
As Lisa Broderick and Ari Ne’eman (2008) stress, the autism-as-disease metaphor is
the most widely accepted and well-known of all autism metaphors. Several autism advo-
cacy groups — many of which have from little to no self-identified Autistic people among
470 European Journal of International Relations 24(2)

their leadership — are responsible for promoting this metaphor. However, Autistic self-
advocates have stressed that rather than constructing autism as a disease, it should be
understood as part of a larger umbrella of “neurodiversity” (Broderick and Ne’eman,
2008: 470) that includes both autistic and non-autistic people alike: “atypical (neurodiver-
gent) neurological development is a normal human difference that is to be tolerated and
respected as any other human difference.” With the concept of neurodiversity, autism can
be one of many socially acceptable neurological dispositions. While the autism-as-disease
metaphor encourages medical interventions in order to mitigate symptoms associated
with autism and justify research to cure autism, understanding autism as a neurological
difference portrays the pursuit to cure autism as “the same as destroying their original
personalities” (Broderick and Ne’eman, 2008: 470).
For most of its history, however, experts have portrayed autism as a pathology. Majia
Holmer Nadesan (2005: 70–166) traces the emergence of autism as a mental disorder
back to when psychiatrists Leo Kanner and Hans Asperger identified autism as a distinct
disorder in 1943 and 1944. During the 1950s to the 1960s, when psychoanalysis was a
popular psychiatric practice in the US, doctors believed that distant and depressed moth-
ers were the cause of autism. As psychoanalysis went out of vogue in psychiatry, cogni-
tive psychologists established a new academic consensus that how the brain was
hard-wired explains why someone is Autistic. From cognitive psychology comes theo-
ries of what autism is that are still popular today (regardless of whether they accurately
portray the personalities and thought processes of Autistic people): mindblindness (the
inability to account for others’ minds), poor executive function (the inability to prepare
oneself to solve problems or handle new information), and a deficit in central coherence
(the inability to take information and relate it to a larger context). More recently, neuro-
scientists and biogenetic researchers have sought to locate the cause of autism within
genes and identify where in the brain autism is. The goal of much of this recent research
on autism is to ultimately develop some sort of gene therapy or drug that could normalize
or cure Autistic persons.
Public knowledge of autism often reflects medical discourses and usually understands
autism as a disease. Stuart Murray (2008: 207–209) says that the public believes both
that autism is an epidemic and that finding its cause(s) is essential for a cure. Much of
this rhetoric sensationalizing autism comes from various memoirs of parents with autis-
tic children, such as, according to Alicia A. Broderick (2011), Catherine Maurice’s Let
Me Hear Your Voice, which popularized applied behavior analysis as a “real hope” and
an important tool in the “recovery (to normalcy)” for Autistic children. Since then, sev-
eral other accounts of families’ struggles with their Autistic children have sprung forth.
As Mark Osteen (2008: 16–29) writes, there is an abundance of memoirs in the US of
family members elaborating on their experiences with Autistic relatives that too often
become mawkish and tend to emphasize a particular treatment.
Furthermore, IR scholarship is connected with the popular autism-as-disease meta-
phor. Throughout the IR literature, when scholars invoke autism to make some sort of
critique, the notion that autism is an undesirable disease is either explicitly stated or
heavily implied. Even if not explicitly calling autism a pathology, disorder, or disease,
scholars will often frame autism in a narrative diagnosis–treatment motif. Scholars will
rhetorically “diagnose” a foreign policy by labeling it as autistic, and the solution
Christian 471

proposed or implied should “treat” that autism. Without widely held beliefs that autism
is a disease, IR scholars’ use of the diagnosis–treatment motif would not make sense.
Furthermore, through using this motif, IR scholars reinforce the autism-as-disease con-
struct and undermine the autism-as-neurodiversity alternative.
The parallels between IR’s use of autism and popular autism metaphors go beyond
autism-as-disease. For instance, many autism metaphors persistently prop up what
Douglas Biklen et al. (2005) call the “myth of the person alone” — that the character
aspect of autism is its withdrawnness from the world and a general disinterest of other
people. According to Alicia A. Broderick and Ari Ne’eman (2008: 463–465), people
often conceptualize autism through spatial metaphors. Others perceive Autistic people
as coming from a foreign area, as if they were born on a completely different planet.
Additionally, people may describe autism as a sort of withdrawing to a foreign area,
trapped in fortresses and walls that need to be breached in order to save the person
within. Both of these stereotypes, however, are mostly historical remainders of now
widely dismissed Freudian understandings of autism. Furthermore, it is problematic to
associate a state of disinterest as being autistic when being or appearing withdrawn or
disinterested is a common behavior in several other people who are not identified as
autistic. Matthew K. Belmonte (2008) describes how behaviors that seemingly dis-
tance Autistic people from the world, such as repetition, serve the same psychological
purposes that routines, narratives, and practices serve non-Autistic people; they are
coping mechanisms that assist people in making sense of, maneuvering through, and
dealing with a world that can otherwise appear chaotic, all-consuming, and dangerous.
Furthermore, Straus (2013: 466–473) elaborates on how there is an identifiable com-
munity of Autistic people who produce cultural works of literature, art, and music,
all of which most people would consider to involve social interactions in either the
creating or publicizing of such works. Likewise, there are advocacy groups and social
networks for Autistic people to interact with one another (Autistic Self Advocacy
Network, 2015; Autism Women’s Network, 2015; Wrong Planet, 2015). Equating or
defining autism as loneliness in the IR literature is very prevalent and usually comes
into play when a political actor’s behavior (in either theoretical postulation or actual
foreign policy analysis) is overly self-concerning or oblivious to the realities of inter-
national or regional politics.
Furthermore, there are other stereotypes that, while they appear less frequently in the
analyzed IR literature, are common cultural misperceptions of autism, such as the autism-
as-violence and autism-as-criminality metaphors. One recent example of this was how the
media sensationalized the 2014 Santa Barbara killer Elliot Rodger’s alleged Asperger’s
Syndrome, which is part of the autism spectrum, even though how his alleged condition
caused him to go on a rampage is unclear (Farberov et al., 2014). In trying to find some
sort of explanation for his crime, reporters latched on to the diagnosis, depicting Autistic
people as posing a physical threat to the general public. This association between autism
and violence goes further back, however. For example, Murray (2008) mentions the 1981
horror film The Pit, where the Autistic child Jamie Benjamin lures his bullies into a mon-
ster-filled hole. It is often assumed by parents and doctors that violent and self-harming
behavior by Autistic people is inherent to the autism itself. However, according to Danielle
Elliot (2013), some scientists push back against this essentialization and point to recent
472 European Journal of International Relations 24(2)

research suggesting that such behaviors are linked to the absence of certain bacteria in
bowels that can lead to constipation. The aggressive behavior, they argue, is not inherent
to autism itself. Related to the autism-as-violence metaphor is autism-as-criminality. For
instance, reporters sometimes use autism to explain non-violent crimes. As an example,
Murray (2010) mentions an article about the indictment of British hacker Gary McKinnon
that brings up his Asperger’s Syndrome diagnosis without providing any explanation for
its relevance to his crimes. This sort of unexplained connection between autism and crime
has the potential to frame Autistic people as inherently “antisocial,” which feeds into the
related myth of the Autistic person alone.
Finally, the IR literature sometimes references the autism-as-perpetual-childhood
metaphor. Jennifer L. Stevenson, Bev Harp, and Morton Ann Gernsbacher (2011) find
that many of the popular representations of Autistic people are typically those of chil-
dren. There are several consequences stemming from how parent-centered autism
groups, charities, and the news emphasize the relationship between autism and children.
First, it takes public visibility away from Autistic adults. Second, it associates Autistic
adults with the “eternal child,” which can shape the imaginations of non-Autistic adults
to, on the one hand, deny Autistic people rights and access to resources and, on the other
hand, behave paternalistically towards them. Finally, infantilizing autism distracts the
public from issues that Autistic adults face, such as acquiring and maintaining fair work,
accessing college education, or having housing accommodations.
Moving from disability scholarship on autism, I make three related claims about how
IR depicts autism. First, autism is a popular narrative prosthesis for IR scholars to
describe suboptimal foreign policies and augment the cogency of their own theories (and
often depreciate rival theories). Although disability scholars often refer to fictional works
when discussing narrative prosthesis, IR scholars themselves frequently use autism in a
similar manner. As a narrative prosthesis, autism is most often a metaphor associated
with undesirable or implausible social and political circumstances, and rarely has any
positive connotations. While rhetorically shaping how the audience perceives a problem-
atic foreign policy or theory, these narrative prostheses simultaneously condition readers
to believe in a supposedly normal or ideal foreign policy or international political theory.
This supposed normality becomes an imaginary point of reference for understanding
what is supposedly deficient in autistic states and theories. Second, many of the popular
stereotypes and myths about autism (autism-as-perpetual-childhood, autism-as-violence,
and especially both autism-as-disease and autism-as-aloneness) that can be found in dis-
ability scholarship are also present in IR texts. It is through these stereotypes that IR’s
autism metaphors get their rhetorical power to analyze foreign policies and IR theories.
In the following section, I identify how various autism metaphors in IR invoke these
stereotypes and myths. Several of the aforementioned negative autism stereotypes are
present in the analyzed IR scholarship. Some stereotypes, like the autism-as-perpetual-
childhood metaphor, are less frequently used by IR scholars than other stereotypes and
myths, like the autism-as-disease and autism-as-aloneness, and some scholars invoke
multiple stereotypes at the same time. Third, and most importantly, whether or not the
authors are cognizant of the consequences of their use of autism, IR is uncritically linked
with an ideology of ability that dehumanizes Autistic people through the use of metaphors
that allude to negative stereotypes. When it draws on problematic autism metaphors,
Christian 473

IR scholarship also strengthens negative attitudes toward autism by associating it with

undesirable theories and policies.

Representations of autism in IR
This section is divided into two parts. The first part focuses on texts that liken particu-
lar states or their governments to having autism. In this part, autism metaphors are
used to invoke a diagnosis–treatment motif. In such cases, scholars are using the
autism-as-disease and autism-as-aloneness metaphors to convince their audiences
of the cogency and seriousness of their assessments. The second part is a review of
scholarship that uses autism metaphors for theoretical arguments. IR theorists also
commonly invoke autism-as-disease and autism-as-aloneness, but they frequently use
other metaphors. In both parts, all these autism metaphors disparage or essentialize
autism, and they ultimately support views of autism as an abnormality, a pathology,
and/or a deficit. By rhetorically drawing on problematic and ableist understandings of
autism, the authors can bring legitimacy to their arguments, but they simultaneously
strengthen negative and ableist understandings of autism in associating them with
undesirable theories and policies.

When states are autistic

As mentioned earlier, foreign policy analysts often use autism metaphors as a narrative
diagnosis–treatment motif. This motif often involves three factors, though some analysts
will use just one or two of these factors. First, the analyst diagnoses a state as autistic
based on an observation of suboptimal foreign policy-related behaviors. Second, the
analyst explains why the state is autistic by pointing out its internal political problems or
its cultural particularities. Third, the analyst will explicitly or implicitly make sugges-
tions for solving (i.e. treating) the state’s autism.

Diagnosing a state’s autism. Foreign policy analysts using autism metaphors often iden-
tify a series of suboptimal state foreign policies that appear to exemplify autism. A com-
mon theme in the use of these autism references is that they draw their rhetorical meaning
from the autism-as-aloneness and autism-as-disease metaphors. For instance, Edward
Luttwak’s (2012: 12) book labels China’s “pronounced insensitivity to foreign sensi-
tivities” as a “great-state autism.” Great-state autism is a failure for great states to give
adequate attention to external politics because of the intensity of internal social and polit-
ical dynamics. The US, Russia, India, and China each suffer a deficit in “constant situa-
tional awareness of the world around them that is natural in small countries of equal
advancement” (Luttwak, 2012: 13). However, great-state autism is not merely a lack of
paying attention to the international environment, since:

in the absence of the serious and earnest study that domestic urgencies make impossible,
decision-makers cannot absorb in-depth information with all its complexities and subtleties,
even if it is offered to them … Instead, decisions on foreign affairs are almost always made on
the basis of highly simplified, schematic representations of unmanageably complex realities,
474 European Journal of International Relations 24(2)

which are thereby distorted to fit within internally generated categories, expectations, and
perspectives. (Luttwak, 2012: 13–14)

Great-state autism is therefore a series of foreign policy-related failures to grasp the

myriad complexities of international politics that smaller states have less difficulty com-
prehending. The autistic great state takes information from the international system and,
rather than responding optimally to such information, oversimplifies this information.
Another example of an autism metaphor to describe foreign policy failures is Ivan P.
Hall’s (1994/1995) article discussing Japan’s failures in its pivot to Asia. Hall recalls a
presentation by Japanese scholars at the Second Asia-Pacific Conference in May 1991
who had attempted to appeal to a pan-Asian cultural sphere. The presentation, for Hall,
symbolizes Japan’s “same autistic insensitivity to [its] neighbors (once again, apparently
not consulted)” (Hall, 1994/1995: 22). Hall later criticizes Japan for its incomprehension
of its past actions vis-a-vis East Asia during the former’s imperial past:

Chinese inclinations toward Confucian magnanimity and Buddhist forgetting cannot erase the
reality of millions of lives lost during the war. Japan’s obtuseness with this historical fact was
inadvertently betrayed by a Tokyo editorial writer who returned from Hong Kong not so long ago
amazed by the way the Chinese and British got along with each other in spite of the Opium War
of 1842, and puzzling over what was missing in the Japanese approach. (Hall, 1994/1995: 25)

Japan’s autism is therefore a metaphor for its failure to actually engage East Asia and
recognize lasting historical tensions. A normal, non-autistic Japan, the article implies,
would have actually been empathetic to the perspectives of other East Asian states and
acted in a collaborative manner to build support for a pan-Asian community.
While Luttwak and Hall are interested in how international actors fail to understand
their own geopolitical regions, other scholars who use autism metaphors are interested in
a state’s geopolitical ignorance of outside regions. This is the case with Anatol Lieven
and John C. Hulsman’s (2006) criticism of post-9/11 American liberal hawks for not
learning from the lessons of classical realism. In particular, the authors diagnose liberals’
support of the 2003 Iraq War as “an indifference verging on autism towards the views of
the Muslim world in general, and the Arab world in particular” (Lieven and Hulsman,
2006: 72). Reinforcing the myth of the person alone, Lieven and Hulsman tie autism to
America’s failure to account for the Arab and Muslim others. To reiterate, the narrative
use of this metaphor obscures the outdated theories that say that a withdrawnness and
lack of awareness constitutes autism.
In another essay of American foreign policy vis-a-vis the Middle East, Laffey and
Weldes (2004: 355) say that the post-9/11 USA’s incomprehension of Middle Eastern
antipathy “highlights an active forgetting of the many ways in which the attacks are inti-
mately linked to US foreign policies in Iran, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the
Middle East more generally.” While the autism-as-disease metaphor is implied in the
previous works, Laffey and Weldes (2004: 357) more explicitly characterize this active
forgetting as a “collective autism” toward international politics in pathological terms.
The authors describe autism as “a severely incapacitating lifelong developmental disa-
bility” that leads to “difficulty relating to people, objects, and events,” an incapability to
Christian 475

“establish and maintain reciprocal relationships with people,” “difficulties with changes
in routine or familiar surroundings,” and a “rigidity in routines” or “repetitive body
movements or behavior patterns” (Laffey and Weldes, 2004: 357).
Peter Christoff (2005), rather than focusing on geopolitical obliviousness, studies
how Australia’s Howard government failed to respond to both domestic and international
climate change-related information. Like Laffey and Weldes, Christoff uses the autism-
as-disease metaphor by stressing how the Howard government could almost withdraw
and dismiss information:

One can argue that since 1997 the Howard government has successfully engaged in double-
edged dismissiveness, rather than double-edged diplomacy, in the area of climate policy. Such
double-edged dismissiveness is clearly intentional. However, what seems a triumph of the will
to some may appear to be policy autism to others, if one defines “policy autism” as the
pathological inability to read and process critical signals into coherent and appropriate policy.
Given the extent to which the Howard government has ignored critical changes in the social,
economic and environmental settings for climate policy since 1997, maybe its climate policy
stance should therefore also be interpreted as an instance of policy autism. (Christoff, 2005:
43–44, emphasis in original)

Finally, John Kurt Jacobsen (1995) uses an autism metaphor to discuss a state’s incom-
prehension of domestic political factors. Regarding Kathryn Sikkink’s research on how
developmentalism failed in Argentina, Jacobsen says:

Sikkink cites the cautionary example of an Argentine policy functionary whose technocratic
frame of reference made him utterly insensitive to how his actions and words were eroding
political support. His economic reasoning, she explains, “made sense within the intricate
reasoning of desarrollista (developmentalist) thought but appeared contradictory to those not
immersed in this thought” — which, when you are sufficiently outnumbered, describes the
condition of autism. These particular politicians and the developmental experts they consulted
were “dismally unaware” of the symbolic dimension of politics or “how it would play in
Peoria” — a grave oversight. (Jacobsen, 1995: 304–305)

Jacobsen diagnoses Argentina, led by esoteric developmentalists, as autistic because

their way of thinking prevented them from recognizing that in order to be successful,
they actually needed to engage with Argentina’s symbolic political traditions. While
Jacobsen does not label autism as a pathology, disorder, or disease, the autism-as-disease
metaphor is implied insomuch as the autistic insularity of developmentalist thinkers is
associated with erroneous political strategy.

Explaining why a state is autistic. Several of the aforementioned authors provide various
reasons as to why a state actor has become autistic.2 For instance, according to Luttwak
(2012), China has several cultural and domestic reasons why it has great state autism. For
instance, Communist Party leaders are constantly concerned that they will lose their
political legitimacy and be overthrown:

Thus, when there is no earthquake, flood, major riot, or abrupt economic troubles to divert the
attention of China’s leaders from the complexities of the outside world, they create their own
476 European Journal of International Relations 24(2)

disturbance by overreacting in extreme degree to very minor political threats, indeed to the
mere auto-suggestion of non-existent threats. This pattern of conduct is highly significant
because it reflects a permanent predicament: the structural insecurity of the leaders of the CCP
[Chinese Communist Party], whose power has neither democratic legitimacy nor the ideological
legitimacy that their predecessors could claim, regardless of the objective merits of that
ideology. (Luttwak, 2012: 21)

Luttwak says that another cause of China’s autism is its reliance on antiquated diplo-
matic traditions. Luttwak (2012: 35) asserts that the great state autism is heightened “by
the tacit assumptions of centrality and hierarchal superiority that are inherent in the tribu-
tary tradition of Han foreign relations.” Likewise, China’s autism is implicitly a conse-
quence of its uncritical reliance on ancient military texts from the Warring States period,
especially Sun Tzu’s Art of War, which have little guidance in how to either create a
grand strategy or act diplomatically toward culturally heterogeneous states (Luttwak,
2012: 72–78).
Similar to Luttwak, Hall’s (1994/1995) analysis of Japanese autistic apathy of Asian
geopolitics focuses on perceived deficiencies in Japanese culture. Hall implies that the
autism is rooted in traditional cultural values that incubate a collective egoism that strug-
gles to admit wrongdoing:

The greatest “cultural gap,” of course, remains Japan’s reluctance to liquidate the emotional
residue of its past aggression in Asia and dissolve suspicion among its former victims regarding
its true intentions … Since their universalistic values are weak … it is especially painful for the
Japanese people to admit to any wrongdoing by their nation as a whole. (Hall, 1994/1995: 23)

Laffey and Weldes (2004) also focus on domestic cultural reasons for a state’s autism,
but they emphasize how such cultural reasons serve political elites. The USA’s autism
has “social roots: produced and reproduced in discourses linked to sites of social and
institutional power” (Laffey and Weldes, 2004: 358). Laffey and Weldes recognize that
their autism diagnosis is ultimately metaphorical and thus demonstrate a self-awareness
about the limitations of autism metaphors (a self-awareness that is not apparent in most
of the IR literature using such metaphors). However, such self-awareness is not like
being conscious that these metaphors are drawing from ableist narratives and conse-
quently perpetuate them. For Laffey and Weldes, the reason for the USA’s autistic forget-
ting of its own foreign policy misdeeds is produced by hegemonic institutional
arrangements that value certain (mis)understandings of critical current events over more
accurate and subversive explanations.
Finally, Christoff (2005) argues that there are three distinct reasons why the Howard
government could engage in policy autism vis-a-vis misinterpreting and/or ignoring the
international and domestic support for climate change:

[First,] the success with which domestic action to reduce emissions has been represented as
having a harsh economic impact on a few well-defined industries while delivering uncertain
and diffuse economic benefits, while other ecological and social costs and benefits have been
discounted in this debate; [second,] the absence of clearly defined and effective groups or
coalitions opposing current policies on climate change and the presence of an executive that
Christian 477

deliberately thwarts rather than encourages the emergence of policy coalitions representative of
popular opinion; and [third] the absence of political and cultural institutions that ensure political
accountability on social/economic/political issues of major national significance and public
concern, which has also meant that public opinion about existing policies on global warming
has remained unrepresented in national policy and unrecognized in electoral outcomes.
(Christoff, 2005: 43)

Prescribing a treatment. Foreign policy analysts using autism metaphors often implicitly
or explicitly offer a solution or “treatment” to mitigate or symbolically cure a state of its
autism. One such implicit solution can be inferred from Christoff’s (2005) essay. To
recall the block quote earlier, Christoff explicitly refers to the government’s failure to
address climate change as a pathological autism to outsiders. Rather than cooperate with
the international community and have a reasonable policy to address global climate
change, Christoff depicts Australia as someone with autism who maintains routines with-
out adjusting to the dire information available. A non-autistic state would have an envi-
ronmental policy program that would recognize that greenhouse emissions are causing
serious economic and social damage to Australia and elsewhere. To treat the Australian
government’s autism would, Christoff implies, involve some combination of countering
the Howard government’s framing of its (absent) environmental policy, building a more
visible opposition committed to improving climate policies, and reforming institutions to
provide more political transparency.
Although several of the analysts do not explicitly mention a treatment or solution,
others make specific prescriptions. In Luttwak’s (2012) case, the solution to China’s
great-state autism would include significant domestic reforms. China would either have
to democratize or become a Stalinist regime:

It follows that the only correct grand strategy for today’s China would have to contradict
common sense and go against all normal human instincts by renouncing any but the smallest
military growth. In addition, insofar as CCP rule also rests on the support of its military leaders
… such a grand strategy would also require a drastic political restructuring, to either replace
CCP rule with democratic legitimacy — and one sustained by an antimilitarist consensus
(a further leap) — or to the contrary, to further elevate the CCP into a position of unquestioned
authority over the armed forces. It is a bizarre thought that to construct a non-threatening grand
strategy, the CCP might have to become a Stalinist party sustained by secret police terror, rather
than military support, with, in Mao-speak, power still growing out of the barrel of the gun, but
of very small caliber. (Luttwak, 2012: 69)

Luttwak’s domestic solution completes his use of autism as a narrative prosthesis. The
great-state autism narrative device directs readers to understand China’s foreign pol-
icy mistakes as pathological. As a narrative prosthesis using the diagnosis–treatment
motif, great-state autism props up two related ideals that China needs for normaliza-
tion. The first ideal is one where great states are capable of sufficiently comprehend-
ing the international system, without being caught up in domestic sociopolitical
issues. The second ideal is a democratic one, which Luttwak presents as a useful
treatment for China’s autism because it will provide the legitimacy that the Chinese
leadership needs to maintain political order (without having to resort to totalitarian
478 European Journal of International Relations 24(2)

violence). As such, great-state autism is a pathology heightened by inefficient and

precariously legitimate governance, and democracy or hyper-authoritarian reform is
the treatment necessary to alleviate it. Such a narrative prosthesis, as is often the case,
is less concerned about the lives of actual Autistic people and more concerned about
trying to inform foreign policy elites around the world about China’s domestic and
foreign policy shortcomings.
Laffey and Weldes (2004: 358), while their analysis stresses that America’s autistic
forgetfulness is imbedded in a network of institutional arrangements, argue that the solu-
tion to autism has to be through “acknowledging the contingent nature of such represen-
tations” in order to actualize a “possibility of articulating US foreign policy in non-autistic
ways.” Furthermore, they complement their treatment with a call for further policy
research on political autism:

Autism, as a seemingly routine way of narrating the relations between the United States, US
foreign policy, and the wider world, is not explicable as a more or less automatic function of the
logic of identity and difference. Instead, autism is a contingent and sometimes preferred
phenomenon, shaped by institutionally mediated concentrations of social power and interest.
Future research thus ought to address the issues surrounding where and how autism — as a
specific attitude towards the international — is reproduced or transformed, and why. (Laffey
and Weldes, 2004: 372)

Uncannily, Laffey and Weldes’s completion of their autistic narrative prosthesis qua
diagnosis–treatment motif parallels contemporary scientific fascination with improving
knowledge on how to identify (and possibly prevent) environmental or biological condi-
tions that lead to autism. The rhetorical power of Laffey and Weldes’s calls for further
research to hopefully prevent policy autism may, to an extent, derive itself from such a
similarity.

Autism in IR theory
IR theorists use autism metaphors for one of two reasons. On the one hand, IR theorists
use such metaphors to incorporate ostensibly autistic political behaviors into their theo-
ries. While incorporating stereotypical autistic behaviors to improve their theories, these
IR scholars suggest that autism is not a ubiquitous feature of international politics, but
present only in particular circumstances. On the other hand, IR theorists apply autism
metaphors to critique other hypothetical or actual theories. These IR theorists will label
some apparently flawed assumption in the rival theory as autistic and then juxtapose that
flaw with their own non-autistic theory. This juxtaposition communicates how the non-
autistic theory is superior to the autistic theory.

Incorporating autism into IR theories. Several IR theorists have employed autism meta-
phors for their arguments. In a handful of instances, the autism metaphor helps explain
exceptional circumstances, where international actors may act in seemingly asocial or
oblivious ways. One early example of this is Richard Little’s (1975) elaboration on revis-
ing a model to explain how and why states intervene in, and then withdraw from, civil
Christian 479

wars. When testing an earlier model, Little identified flaws and makes appropriate revi-
sions. According to the new model:

[w]hen decision-makers decided to intervene in civil war, their image of civil war in the target
state was taken out of focus. The nature of the conflict was redefined, and the troops were sent
into the target state without apparently contravening the nonintervention norm. In the revised
model, therefore, instead of the intervention response being viewed as a form of deviance, it is
depicted as a result of autistic thinking: a systematic distortion of reality. (Little, 1975: xi–xii)

Little’s autism metaphor describes instances when a state’s foreign policy leaders fail to
take norms of nonintervention into account because of a larger failure to comprehend the
actual facts revolving around a civil war. Autism is thus depicted as some sort of collec-
tive and institutionalized deficit in recognizing reality and consequently amending one’s
own perception of it.
Other scholars have also incorporated autism to build their theories. In one essay,
Barry Buzan (1993: 327) aims at “relat[ing] the concept of ‘international society’ to
structural realism and regime theory.” Buzan engages in a thought experiment of what an
international system of anarchy, prior to the superimposition of an international society,
would look like. A priori, the system would have a noteworthy amount of communica-
tion among sovereign entities. Much of this communication, with activities like visits
and trades, will be very limited. At first, this system will be quite peaceful, but as com-
munication and interaction increase, conflict becomes common, with piracy and imperi-
alistic campaigns occurring. Buzan then describes this moment in his thought experiment
as autistic:

Since the units share no culture, do not formally recognize each other, and have no established
conventions for diplomatic communication, it is easy for the behavior of each to take on a
highly self-centered and self-righteous character in relation to the interests of others. In
individuals, an excess of inner-driven over relational behavior is defined as autism. The
international relations of a system without any society are thus analogous to those of a
madhouse: idiosyncratic, unpredictable, only weakly mediated by communication and a sense
of raison de système, and easily moved to violence. (Buzan, 1993: 340–341)

Buzan posits that despite being a “primitive international system,” it is highly unlikely
that there would be no rudimentary components of some sort of, albeit “underdevel-
oped,” international system, which Buzan calls an “‘immature’ anarchy” (Buzan, 1993:
341). Comparing the autistic international system to an asylum reinforces the notion that
autism is a mental disease that is best treated with long-term or permanent institutionali-
zation. Likewise, Buzan’s analogy assumes that autism is inherently violent and pro-
foundly alone. Finally, in calling such an anarchy “immature,” Buzan infantilizes autism,
which can either mean that autism is only found in children or that autism renders human
beings into perpetual children. Altogether, autism is depicted as a dangerous abnormality
to fear and isolate.
In Alastair Iain Johnston’s (2001: 487–489) article about socialization in IR, the
abstract disputes the neorealist claim that “socialization (or selection, more properly) [is]
a process by which autistic non-balancers are weeded out of the anarchical international
480 European Journal of International Relations 24(2)

system” (Johnston, 2001: 487). Johnston gainsays this claim by saying that it is not
entirely clear that non-balancers are actually being weeded out, but he does not dispute
the labeling of the failure to be socialized into non-balancing as autistic. Johnston there-
fore uses the autism-as-aloneness metaphor to explain instances where states have not
been exterminated because of failures to appropriately respond to the international
system.
One scholar, Stefano Guzzini (2000) relies on the autism-as-violence and autism-as-
aloneness metaphors to describe how the IR discipline itself is autistic. Drawing on
Pierre Bourdieu, Guzzini says that the ability of a field to discipline its members and
consequently isolate itself from outside influence is like autism:

[T]here are all the interferences that can exist because the same agent is part of different fields.
Here, it depends very much on the “discipline” the field (as, for instance, an academic discipline)
succeeds in imposing on its participants not to “steal” and transpose dispositions from other
fields (arts or politics, for instance). Hence, it depends on the degree of “autism” of the field’s
ability to refract the influence of other fields. (Guzzini, 2000: 176)

Like Guzzini, Christopher Hill (2003) also draws from autism stereotypes of aloneness
and violence. Hill speaks of a “range of strategies deployed [that] may be divided for
ease of analysis into those which operate at the ambitious end of the continuum … and
those pursuing a more limited set of ‘possessional’ goals, concerned with a state’s par-
ticular and concrete interests” (Hill, 2003: 242). Hill describes the latter end of this con-
tinuum as “autistic power politics … a self-regarding concern for the perceived needs of
a state (often generated by internal problems) without concern for the impact on others”
(Hill, 2003: 243, emphasis in original), which Hill likens to the foreign policies of
Bismark, Brezhnev, Milosevic, and Hussein. Hill later discusses the policies of so-called
“rogue states,” which he does not explicitly call autistic. However, and while Hill laments
labeling states as rogue, there is reference to “internal problems” in these states, which
implies that these states are autistic:

Labels of this kind are easy to apply … but difficult to lose — or to forget … Moreover, they
do not help us make sense of such delicate problems as, say, relations with Iran, Nigeria or
Yugoslavia, where the internal forces for and against a notion of international community, and
therefore entry into multilateral cooperation, may be finely balanced, and easily upset by
political abuse. (Hill, 2003: 250)

Hill therefore reinforces autism’s affiliation with violence and crime by comparing it to
rogue states associated with bellicosity and aggression, all while propping up the con-
struct that autism is essentially outside the community, caught up in internal affairs and
disinterested in concerns that other states in the international community might have.

Using autism to reject rival IR theories. IR scholars have also used autism metaphors to
identify flaws in other theories, both actual and hypothetical. These scholars then con-
trast autistic theories with their own non-autistic articulations of international politics. In
such instances, autism is reinforcing an author’s claim that an alternative theory has an
implausible assumption and is therefore flawed. One notable example is Alexander
Christian 481

Wendt’s (1999) Social Theory of International Politics. Wendt begins with a set of chal-
lenges facing social constructivists, including concerns both that international law and
norms appear to be limited in suppressing material aspects of power and interest, and that
domestic, rather than international, factors could play a far more important role in con-
structing actors’ identities and interests. Wendt then says that “[s]ome states, like Albania
or Burma, have interacted so little with others that they have been called ‘autistic’”
(Wendt, 1999: 2). While Wendt does not go so far as to say that such autistic states do not
exist (and thus may or may not be using the autism metaphor to develop his social-
constructivist theory), he does use autism as a metaphor to argue that there is some
absurdity to rival Innenpolitik theories: “[I]ndividuals and domestic politics may be
important causes of foreign policy, but ignoring systemic structures assumes that states
are autistic, which usually is not the case” (Wendt, 1999: 19). Later, Wendt elaborates on
the problem with treating states as autistic:

Against [the English School and Kenneth Waltz] I shall argue that anarchy has no logic apart
from process and that interaction is structured, albeit not at the macro-level. Neorealists may
worry that this move undermines the autonomy of systemic theory. I disagree. The distinctiveness
of the systemic project lies not in its ostensible independence from unit-level properties, but in
its concern with the effects of how inter-national relations are structured, which cannot be
explained by theories that treat states as autistic. (Wendt, 1999: 21, emphasis in original)

Finally, criticizing Waltz’s dismissal of “reductionist” domestic factors, Wendt con-

trasts his own theory against truly reductionist theories that explain all of international
politics through domestic politics: the latter “treats states as autistic, the [former] as
social; one works in an inside-out manner, the other outside-in; one is psychological in
spirit, the other is social psychological. Calling both reductionist, as Waltz does, obscures
these differences” (Wendt, 1999: 148–149). Throughout Social Theory, Wendt essential-
izes autism as an extreme form of isolation and aloneness. The overall impression that
readers would get is that autism renders states (and, by association, Autistic people) as
alone, uninfluenced by ideas around them, and lacking any sort of guidance or shaping
from external social factors. The autistic state (person) is, rather than a being-in-the-
world, a being-in-its-own-world. Wendt gives no consideration to how many, if not all,
Autistic persons are still influenced by and interact with their surroundings. To say
otherwise falls into the erroneous myth of the Autistic person alone.
Other IR theorists also equate autism with aloneness as they contrast their theories
against real or hypothetical alternatives. Andrew Bruce (1984) discusses how IR erases
the importance of domestic systems in international politics. Similar to Wendt’s discus-
sion of reductionism, Bruce uses autism to differentiate his call for considering domestic
factors from extreme theories that do not take into account international factors:

True, strategic interaction is not just a matter of policies being determined by international
rules that are external to practice. Nor is practice just a simple externalizing of autism, of
entirely “private” states, of self-blind embodiments of technical reason battling it out on
an emptied international stage … Still, to speak of competence and generative schemes
and empowerment as strictly international phenomena is disabling. National organizing
schemes are embedded in and constituted by more than these international protocols. This
482 European Journal of International Relations 24(2)

ethnomethodology of statesmanship merely replaces a statist idealism with an interactionist

idealism. (Bruce, 1984: 324)

David G. Haglund’s (1997) article on Canada’s relationship to the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO) presents a theory of “co-operative security” in which states can
define some interests in terms of a regional community, rather than being asocially
autistic:

[C]o-operative security refers to an arrangement that allows (indeed obliges) members of the
“community” to relax the assumption that “national interest” must always be egoistic (if not
autistic) in inspiration and effect, in favour of an assumption that states can and do define some
interests in terms of the “community” within which they see themselves situated. (Haglund,
1997: 478)

Haglund, in other words, uses the autism-as-aloneness metaphor to explain how a theory
of “co-operative security” overcomes the limitations of other theories in security studies
that do not assume that states can define their interests beyond selfish needs.
The autistic–not-autistic juxtaposition has also been used for ad hominen critiques.
Friedrich Kratochwil (1984: 307) makes such a critique against Rick Ashley for autistic
obscurity bordering on asocial behavior:

[E]ven after several careful readings, I still do not know what on earth the “dialectical unity of
plural totalities” is or, for that matter, what he means when he calls classical realism the
“‘organic intellectuality’ of the worldwide public sphere of bourgeois society”. These terms,
probably Bourdieu’s, have probably lost some of their luster in translation…. [S]omeone out to
convince others of the errors of their ways should take care not to indulge in the pleasures of
autism. Ashley does recognize the need of communicating effectively with his audience; but
recognition and practice never merge.

Other scholars incorporate empirical evidence to dismiss other theories for their
autism. David Kinsella (2002: 212–213), exploring the dynamics of weapons diffusion
and procurement, uses autism as a criticism of theories that do not consider the interna-
tional competition between great powers in the drive for weapons procurement:

Technological advances are not exogenous events that trigger automatic efforts to capture and
“weaponize” new technologies. They instead grow out of interactions between and within
states that, intentionally or unintentionally, help to shape the general course of technological
progress … The Cold War competition was, in a sense, institutionalized in the superpowers’
military research and development centers and arms production establishments. It is certainly
the case that the organizational processes operating within these domestic institutions
represented, and still represent, significant internally driven forces behind weapons procurement.
However, the military industrial downsizing and restructuring that has occurred in both
countries since the end of the Cold War is strong evidence against the notion that procurement
was an autistic process.

Another example, this time with the autism-as-aloneness metaphor intersecting with the
autism-as-violence and autism-as-criminality metaphors, is Stathis N. Kalyvas (2001:
Christian 483

113–116), discussing new (post-Cold War) and old (pre-Cold War) civil wars. Referring
to Hans Magnus Enzensberger, who described new civil wars as being more “horrific
and senseless[ly]” (Kalyvas, 2001: 113) violent than previous, ideologically driven civil
wars, Kalyvas says that “Enzensberger points to ‘the autistic nature of perpetrators [in
new civil wars], and their inability to distinguish destruction and self-destruction’”
(Kalyvas, 2001: 114). Kalyvas criticizes Enzensberger’s theory for two empirical rea-
sons. First, there are several accounts during old civil wars that described the violence as
being random and excessive. Second, there is not much evidence to support the claim
that there is no strategic reasoning in the violence executed in new civil wars. However,
Kalyvas leaves Enzensberger’s characterization of irrational and non-ideological behav-
iors of fighters in new civil wars as autistic intact. Kalyvas challenges the idea that the
violence of new civil wars is chaotic, not that chaotic violence detached from ideology is
symptomatic of autism.
A few consistencies exist in the examined IR literature’s autism metaphors. First, it
exploits autism as a narrative prosthesis to identify a state’s erroneous foreign policy,
specific or marginal circumstances in one’s theory, or alternative, yet inferior, theories
while supporting a normal or ideal foreign policy strategy or theoretical explanation of
how international politics operates. This is obvious in cases like criticism of China’s
failure to quell the fears of its neighbors, Japan’s inability to comprehend pan-Asian
historical memories, Australia’s refusal to have a real climate change policy strategy, and
the handful of essays using autism to disparage Innenpolitik and other theories. While
these works sometimes bring up cognitive impairments that Autistic people may have,
never do these narrative devices direct readers to contemplate Autistic people’s political
and social struggles.
Second, IR scholars often use problematic claims about autism. In the case of Buzan
relating emerging, autistic international societies as immature anarchies, the existence
of Autistic adults is downplayed, and Autistic people are construed as childish. Likewise,
as evident in Buzan’s imagery of an asylum and Kalyvas’s refusal to criticize the asso-
ciation between autism and mindless vehemence, autism has been associated with
violence and criminality. The most common myth found in the IR literature, however,
is that autism is profoundly alone and caught up in its own world. This is seen all the
way back to Little’s (1975) book, and it is featured prominently in Wendt’s and Luttwak’s
books. By constantly emphasizing aloneness and isolation, IR scholars ignore how
Autistic people do engage and interact with others and do not merely exist in their own
universe.
Altogether, problematic uses of autism in IR are connected to discourses that support
the hegemonic, ableist views of autism and eschew alternative, counter-hegemonic
understandings. By criticizing foreign policies for being autistic, scholars present and
use contestable stereotypes and inaccurate myths of autism that render it as an abnormal-
ity to be normalized or as a disease needing to be cured so that a state can improve its
reactions to international politics. To treat China’s great-state autism, Luttwak prescribes
democratic reforms. For the USA’s autistic-like forgetfulness, Laffey and Weldes pro-
pose that the way to treat this autism involves learning how to critique and to undermine
power structures preventing Americans from coming to terms with their imperial history.
Likewise, scholars sometimes explicitly refer to autism as a pathology, as is the case in
484 European Journal of International Relations 24(2)

Christoff’s article. Yet, even when medical discourses are not explicit in the text, the
numerous times that autism is used as a disparaging polemic to portray other states,
scholars, and theories simultaneously rely on and support the idea that autism is a dis-
ease. To be clear, the use of autism metaphors does not mean that a scholar’s research or
thinking on a certain issue should be rejected. However, producing good scholarship
does not right the wrong of utilizing problematic autism metaphors, for these metaphors
spread and reinforce ableism, both in the IR discipline and in wider society. Therefore, it
is important that, to prevent ableist and other oppressive thinking, scholars must not
unthoughtfully accept the banality of metaphors in language, but instead reflect on how
metaphors can frame their research in socially and politically undesirable ways.

Conclusion: New directions for IR in disability studies

How should IR scholars use disability metaphors? It should now be clear that IR scholars
need greater self-consciousness about how the metaphors they use can have social and
political consequences. IR scholars, existing and acting within ableist societies, have
internalized and often unconsciously projected an ideology of ability that devalues disa-
bled people. When scholars fail to acknowledge this and amend their behavior accord-
ingly, they further an ideology that justifies a system of violence that oppresses people
for their physical and mental abnormalities. The relationship between disparaging disa-
bility metaphors and ableism also holds true for those between sexist language and patri-
archy, racist stereotypes and white supremacy, and shallow depictions of the poor and
capitalism. In all these cases, the language used justifies the continuation of the arbitrary
oppression of various peoples. This does not mean that metaphors in general are wrong
per se. Metaphors are important linguistic conventions that can help convey difficult or
novel ideas through invoking resemblances to ideas and conventions that audiences are
familiar with. However, the way in which metaphors are used may also, whether delib-
erately or unintentionally, further legitimize ideologies and discourses that justify mar-
ginalization and oppression — as is the case with the autism metaphors studied in this
article. This does not mean that disability metaphors are inherently problematic, but the
IR literature appears, at least when using autism metaphors, to never provide metaphors
that challenge, rather than reproduce, ableism. Ostensibly, only a few scholars who use
autism metaphors, such as Laffey and Weldes, are self-aware about the usefulness of
autism metaphors, but not even they acknowledge the political issues surrounding how
people understand autism. There could very well be subversive ways for IR scholars to
use disability metaphors, but I have not found any examples in my research on autism
metaphors.
This article also shows the wider importance of a disability studies program in IR.
While there have been a few examples of critical disability studies in political science in
general (Hirschmann and Linker, 2015; Soldatic and Meekosha, 2014) and some notable
critical studies on madness and mental disorders in international relations (Ferreira,
2014; Howell, 2010), there is barely a recognizable disability studies tradition in IR,
unlike the feminist, Marxian, postcolonial, and post-structuralist traditions in the disci-
pline. However, just as many of these traditions challenge IR scholars to understand how
widely held truths in the discipline reflect economic, social, and political structures and
Christian 485

power relations, a disability studies program in IR should elucidate how ableist concepts
like normality, able-bodiedness, and able-mindednes, along with their respective opposi-
tional categories of abnormality and physical and mental disabilities, are tenuous con-
structs that are nonetheless impacting how scholars, practitioners, and others understand
international politics.
A respectable disability studies program in IR would cover at least three broad sets of
topics. First, just as what this article does with autism metaphors, further analysis of dis-
ability metaphors should be pursued. Autism is a prevalent disability metaphor in the IR
literature, but it is by no means the only one. It is not uncommon for IR scholars to
invoke schizophrenia, blindness, deafness, and several other disabilities. Such analysis
would demonstrate what social ideas are embedded in these metaphors, how these meta-
phors are contested by disability scholars and advocates, and how IR’s use of these meta-
phors draws on or challenges these ideas.
Second, disability scholars should research the ways in which disability could inter-
sect with other critical studies in IR. For instance, disability studies could engage with
post-colonial and post-development studies to analyze how international development is
informed by an ideology of ability. Western political philosophy has conceptualized the
sovereign state as a “body politic,” and it may be worthwhile to explore how the ideology
of ability informs how the international community approaches and intervenes in non-
Western and post-colonial states deemed to be “developing” or to have “failed.” Likewise,
disability scholarship in IR could interact with feminist research like Cynthia Enloe’s
(2000) work and the larger field of feminist IR studies. Feminist IR scholars have dem-
onstrated the necessity of the subjugation and utilization of women in a (gendered) inter-
national system, and disability scholars study, in a parallel manner, how an (able-bodied)
international system requires suppressing and controlling disabled or abnormal bodies.
Furthermore, disability studies can discover how the suppression of disabled bodies then
intersects with the suppression of women in international politics.
Third, disability studies in IR may provide novel insights into several important
analytical concepts in social-constructivist research, such as agency and norms. In
regard to agency, disability studies could ask how actors — either because of their
position in the international system or because of their status (i.e. non-state actors,
domestic actors) — could be regularly ignored or objectified by IR scholars. As disa-
bility scholars point out, societies often perceive disabled bodies as weak and therefore
as lacking or undeserving of agency. Ableist ideas influence people to objectify disa-
bled bodies, not to construe them as political agents. Not only is this another poten-
tially fruitful intersection with postcolonial and disability studies in IR, but this can
also advance further self-awareness in IR about how scholars reproduce ableism, this
time by scrutinizing how ableist beliefs are unconsciously projected toward “weak”
political actors. As for norms, disability studies should further study how the normal–
abnormal dichotomy is tied to understanding international politics in terms of norms.
The very concept of norms could be a reification, while alternative, non- or post-norm
conceptualizations could better describe international politics on analytical or norma-
tive grounds.
This article and the rest of the fledgling disability studies in IR are only beginning to
study these issues, but more scholarship is necessary. Establishing disability studies in a
486 European Journal of International Relations 24(2)

rather conservative, state-centric, and Eurocentric discipline like IR is going to be diffi-

cult for structural reasons, as fellow scholars may find this area of research to be trivial,
nonsensical, or unmarketable. Scholars must recognize that, given the unpopularity,
there will be professional risks that must personally be taken to further this body of lit-
erature. However, if successful, this scholarship can make important steps toward reori-
enting IR to take ableism seriously.

Acknowledgements
Earlier drafts were presented at conferences held by the Western Political Science Association, the
International Studies Association, and ISA Northeast. I thank Brent J. Steele, Angela M. Smith,
Jack Amoureux, Daniel Levine, Patricia Owens, Anthony Lang, Jennifer Mitzen, and Andrew
Hom for all their feedback.

Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or
not-for-profit sectors.

Notes
1. See, for example, Bruce (1984), Buzan (1993), Christoff (2005), Gartzke and Lindsay (2015),
Guzzini (2000), Haglund (1997), Hall (1994/1995), Hill (2003), Lieven and Hulsman (2006),
Jacobsen (1995), Johnston (2001), Kalyvas (2001), Kinsella (2002), Kratochwil (1984),
Laffey and Weldes (2004), Little (1975), Luttwak (2012, 2013), Mercer (2010), Pinto (2013),
and Wendt (1999).
2. While I do not include Jacobsen’s (1995) article in this because of the brevity of its explana-
tion, the previous block quote makes it clear that a source of the autism is the technocratic
frames that Argentinian elites used to justify economic policies to the public.

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Author biography
Stephen Michael Christian is a PhD student in the Political Science Department at the University
of Utah, USA. Christian studies international relations and political theory and graduated in 2012
with a BA in Political Science from Georgia Gwinnett College.