Abstract

The aim of this paper was to think with and elaborate on theories developed outside of autism research and the autistic community, and through this support the production of new autistic-led theories; theories and concepts based on autistic people´s own embodied experiences and the social worlds we inhabit. The paper consists of three different sections all of part of the overall umbrella, Being, knowing and doing: Importing theoretical toolboxes for autism studies. In each section we import useful concepts from elsewhere and tailor them to autism studies. Throughout, we mingle our own autoethnographic accounts and shared discourse in relation to research accounts and theories. Illustrating being, we explore and discuss the possibilities of critical realism in autism studies. Illustrating knowing, we explore and discuss the possibilities of standpoint theory in autism studies. Finally, illustrating doing, we explore and discuss the possibilities of neurocosmopolitics including epistemic (in)justice in autism studies. Our proposal here is for an epistemic shift towards neurodiverse collaboration. We are inviting non-autistic people to work with, not on, us, aiming at to make autism research more ethical, breaking down bureaucratic structures, and questioning poor theory and shoddy methodology. Acknowledging intersecting axes of oppression in which an individual seeks to re-negotiate and re-imagine what it means to belong, also means to understand what needs changing in society, as it is and how we might do things differently.