Towards a Science of the Self: Autism, Autobiography, and Animal Behavior in Temple Grandin’s Animals in Translation

Abstract

Abstract This paper argues that Temple Grandin’s work serves as an intervention into the very framework of ‘disability.’ Animals in Translation suggests that the minds of people living with autism are ‘wired differently’; yet, this difference, Grandin makes clear, is by no means always a disadvantage. As a scientist in animal studies and a consultant for animal behavior, Grandin claims that persons on the autism spectrum may be ideally suited for understanding the animal mind. Describing both autism and animal behavior through the discourse of neuroscience, she takes the analogy between persons with autism and animals one step further. Both animals, especially birds, and people on the autism spectrum have long succeeded in disproving assumptions about the limitations of their mental capacity. Not so long ago, Grandin reminds us, neurologists assumed that there was ‘no inside’ to the autistic mind. It has been Grandin’s life’s work, and one of her key accomplishments, to disprove this assumption.