Making meaning material: A textile politics of autistic interests

Abstract

Disability offers important considerations for participatory crafting projects that seek to foreground diverse forms of knowledge-making. As a case study in ‘disability craft’, this ethnographic knitting project uses collaborative knitting pattern design to explore autistic adults’ interests in the context of the autistic self-advocacy movement in the United States. Colloquially known as ‘special interests’, these interests challenge ableist stereotypes about what it means to be autistic. Crucially, this project was informed by the autistic author’s own special interest of knitting, making special interests both the object and method of research. Knitting is used to explore what counts as meaningful knowledge and who can create it. Through themes of identity, well-being and communication, special interests are shown to be intensely meaningful. The final knitted objects from this project materialize knowledge about how autistic people navigate the world and show how craft can support autistic activism against epistemic injustice.