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Autisme, j’accuse! Life-writing, autism and politics in the work of Hugo Horiot

Autism has generated a great deal of controversy, culturally, intellectually and politically. The context for this in recent years in France is unusual and has been the site of strong antagonism. These debates are political in terms of policy implications and disagreements along political lines but also entail the politics of knowledge, and the question of who has the right to speak for whom. Competing groups – parents, ‘experts’ and autistic adults have different claims to validity as knowledge-bearers. This epistemological validity is vital in creating wider public understanding and determining policy directions. Autism life-writing is a new phenomenon in French and contributes to this set of debates. In order to illuminate this further, this article will offer an account of the first best-selling memoir by an autistic individual in France. The book, L’Empereur, c’est moi, is by Hugo Horiot, and was published in 2013, at the height of the ‘autism battle’ in the French public sphere.