Idiots Savants, Retarded Savants, Talented Aments, Mono-Savants, Autistic Savants, Just Plain Savants, People with Savant Syndrome, and Autistic People Who Are Good at Things: A View from Disability Studies

Abstract

<p>People with a particular profile of strengths and weaknesses&mdash;typically involving prodigious skill in one area (such as calendar or arithmetical calculation, art, or music) and a general &ldquo;mental deficiency&rdquo;&mdash;have long been categorized as &ldquo;idiots savants,&rdquo; or with other, similar labels.&nbsp; It is the goal of this paper to dismantle this category in all of its terminological manifestations by deconstructing both the &ldquo;idiocy&rdquo; and the &ldquo;savantism&rdquo; that underpin it.&nbsp; In its place, I focus instead on people with autism, who typically have special interests and activities they pursue intensively and skillfully: people identified as savants are mostly autistic, and autistic people usually have some sort of special interest or skill.&nbsp; For the idiot savant, the savant skill is understood to emerge <em>in spite of</em> the general lack of intelligence.&nbsp; For the autistic person, the special interests or skills arise not in spite of the autism but precisely <em>because of it</em>: autism enables the skill; the skill makes the autism visible.&nbsp; Instead of enfreaking people as super-crips, I propose to celebrate them in a realistic mode, as autistic people who are good at things.</p><p>Keywords: Idiot savant,&nbsp;savant syndrome, autism.&nbsp;</p>