Beyond the Binary: Mapping the Framing Wars of Autism
Adapted from Chapter III of The Cognitive Ecology Model: Neuroqueering Systems Through Relational Design — A Historiography of Autism and the Framing Wars that Shaped It
Why Now? A Note on Urgency
We are in a moment of renewed community policing around autism—where difference is once again being forced into a single, digestible narrative. There is growing pressure to flatten plural experiences of neurodivergence into one story, one brand, one diagnosis, one “acceptable” presentation. But sameness is not safety—it is erasure. And erasure harms.
That is why I’m releasing this now. This essay adapts and expands the historiography chapter from my thesis, not just to trace how autism has been framed, but to intervene in how it continues to be framed today. As both an autistic scholar and a systems thinker, I offer this not as detached critique—but as situated praxis. It is my contribution to the ongoing work of reframing autism from pathology to ecology, from deficit to design insight.
A Note on Language: From “Model” to “Ecologies”
In the original thesis, I referred to this framework as The Cognitive Ecology Model (CEM). But over time, the singularity of “model” has felt too rigid, too extractable—too close to the very systems it was meant to challenge. What has emerged instead is a living, plural framework I now call Cognitive Ecologies.
This language shift reflects the deepening of the work itself—from fixed taxonomy to emergent terrain, from model to mycelium. You’ll see this updated language throughout the essay, but I name the shift here explicitly because naming is power—and sometimes, it is also liberation.
Beyond the Binary: Mapping the Terrain of Cognitive Ecologies
What began as the Cognitive Ecology Model (CEM) has evolved—through praxis, dialogue, and disruption—into a plural, living framework now called Cognitive Ecologies. The shift in name reflects a shift in form: from a singular model to a relational landscape. From fixed shape to adaptive terrain.
Cognitive Ecologies arise not from a single tradition, but from a layered and entangled ecology of disciplines: autism studies, trauma theory, neurodiversity discourse, liberation psychology, and systems thinking.
Scholars such as McGuire (2016) and Silverman (2012) have shown how medicalized frameworks—especially the DSM—reduce relational complexity into deficit-based checklists, obscuring both social context and systemic harm. In contrast, the neurodiversity paradigm reframes autism as natural variation. Yet tensions remain. Thinkers like Nick Walker (2021), Kassiane Asasumasu (2015), and Lydia X. Z. Brown (2017) insist that neurodivergence must remain rooted in political, relational, and historical context—not symbolic inclusion or institutional branding.
Trauma theory further complicates this terrain. Theories such as Polyvagal Theory (Porges, 2011), Intense World Theory (Markram et al., 2010), and Positive Disintegration (Dabrowski, 1964) suggest that sensitivity, masking, and even disintegration are not dysfunctions, but adaptive responses to misattuned environments. Liberation psychology (Martín-Baró, 1994) and decolonial thinkers (Watkins & Shulman, 2008) remind us that psychological suffering is not individual pathology—it is often a mirror of collective, systemic harm.
Finally, systems thinkers such as Bronfenbrenner (1979), Bateson (2000), and Scharmer (2016) teach us to see cognition as emergent—not located inside the individual, but arising through nested systems, feedback loops, and relational environments. Together, these threads weave the conceptual soil from which Cognitive Ecologies grow.
Rather than asking “What is wrong with this person?” Cognitive Ecologies ask: What are the relational, historical, and systemic conditions under which this mind might thrive?
This reframing moves us from classification to context, from intervention to interdependence, from pathology to possibility.
Historical Framing and the Rise of Deficit Discourse
Autism’s entrance into public consciousness was never neutral. From the beginning, it was shaped through a clinical gaze rooted in white, Western psychiatry. Foundational texts like Leo Kanner’s 1943 paper and Hans Asperger’s 1944 lecture described autistic children as socially aloof, emotionally indifferent, and cognitively inflexible. Though Asperger occasionally referred to “autistic intelligence,” both clinicians cast divergence as deficiency (Kanner, 1943; Asperger, 1944; Verhoeff, 2013; Nadesan, 2005).
Most of my deep work like this is behind a paywall—not to restrict, but to honor the labor and support the ongoing development of this work. Reciprocity matters.
That said, if you can’t afford access, just send me a message. I offer gift subscriptions, no questions asked—the only thing I ask is that you read the charter first.
